


don't you want to claim my body like a vandal?

by chasingredballoons



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, minor appearances from lafontaine perry and danny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2871731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingredballoons/pseuds/chasingredballoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Carmilla and Laura go travelling through Europe during summer break. And have sex. A lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vienna

**Author's Note:**

> technically a sequel to i'm not cold when you're by my side (although there's no explicit references to that fic in this one so you don't have to have read it) but can also be read as post-season one, ignoring the after-credits part about the hungry light not being dead.  
> originally supposed to be one big long fic, but decided to split it into five separate chapters once it hit 15k words.  
> basically just smut, smut and more smut, with the occasional bit of fluff thrown in to give the illusion of some kind of plot.  
> title from 'problem' by natalia kills.

Pop culture, sadly, doesn’t appear to have gotten a whole lot right when it comes to their portrayals of vampires.

_They sparkle in the sunlight? Seriously?_  – Twilight.

_What kind of ridiculous fangs are those? They’re not even his canines, they’re his incisors, and they look like toothpicks. Or werewolf fangs._  – True Blood.

_This is fucking atrocious, what did I do to piss you off enough to make me watch this shit?_  – Twilight, again.

_This one isn’t even that bad, it’s just boring. And vaguely incestuous. Why are they both so obsessed with the same dull girl, it’s creepy._  – The Vampire Diaries.

_What the fuck? That doesn’t even make sense, he’s DEAD!_  – Once again, Twilight.

One thing it has gotten right however, at least in Carmilla’s case, is that vampires are complete and utter sex maniacs. Bloodlust going hand-in-hand with regular lust, you assume.

In Carmilla’s defence, she had actually been the one who wanted to wait, old-fashioned nineteenth century sensibilities and whatnot, so it’s not like you complained whenever she put a halt to kissing you senseless, or batted your hands away from various parts of her body, even though you really  _really_  wanted to sleep with your incredibly hot girlfriend.

Carmilla held out for about a week, before being the one that initiated the make out session that led to her eventually ripping your clothes off and making you see stars at least three times in a row before you did the same to her.

And since then, you’re pretty sure  _being sarcastic_ and  _scaring people_  have fallen to numbers two and three respectively on Carmilla’s list of favourite things to do, and number one is replaced with  _tearing your clothes off and fucking you until you can’t remember your own name._

Not that it’s a one-way street of course; you’re just as insatiable as she is. It also has the extremely welcome side effect of drastically reducing the amount of people barging into room 307 unannounced and uninvited, due to the high probability of at least one of you being some form of undressed a good majority of the time.

(Another perk; she doesn’t actually have to breathe, so she can go down on you for like,  _hours_ , which you very much appreciate.)

Carmilla first meets your Dad when he comes to visit during Spring Break, and they immediately bond over a shared love of old black and white horror movies and mild concern for your diet of cookies and grape soda, so it’s not that difficult getting her to agree to come home to Toronto with you during summer break.

She listens to you prattle on about what you have planned for the month you’ll be home, before she looks confused and points out that summer break is two months long.

“Well, um, about that,” you start, hoping what you’re about to suggest isn’t a monumentally moronic idea. “You always go on and on about having been almost everywhere in Europe, whereas I’ve only been here, and to Marseille once when I was eleven. And well,” you swallow nervously; Carmilla’s blank expression isn’t giving anything away. “I’ve always wanted to visit Paris. And Reykjavik. And the million other places you’ve mentioned.”

“Are you suggesting we go on holiday together?” Carmilla asks with a delighted smile, and you can’t tell if she’s being serious or if she’s being… Carmilla.

“Um, yeah? Unless you’re, you know, against it or don’t want to spend the entire summer with-“ you start rambling nervously before Carmilla leans forward to kiss you, promptly shutting you up.

“I would love to,” she replies, smiling at you fondly and kissing you again. “The only thing that could possibly make Paris or Reykjavik better than they already are is if you were there with me.”

/

After spending the first month of summer break in Toronto (where your Dad only walks in on you and Carmilla twice), you go to Vienna first, and you realise as soon as the taxi drops you off in front of an enormous five star hotel that leaving Carmilla in charge of accommodation while you booked trains and flights was both the best and worst idea you’ve ever had. The worst, because  _Carmilla how the hell did you afford this oh my God_ , but also the best, because it makes the Hilton look like a crappy motel chain.

She justifies it with, “I have a three centuries old trust fund cupcake, and you deserve the best.”

While you’ve always been interested in seeing the Austrian capital, you don’t actually leave the hotel room for the first two days. You barely even leave the bed, except to go to the bathroom, to answer the door when you order room service (which ends up with Carmilla knocking an entire plate of pancakes onto the floor before fucking you on the table) or to shower (which leads to you dropping to your knees in front of Carmilla and making her scream loud enough the entire floor can probably hear her.)

The afternoon of the third day you force Carmilla to put some clothes on so you can drag her out to do something touristy, since  _Carm we cannot go to Vienna and not actually do anything the entire time._  Her completely predictable answer of  _we’ve been doing plenty of stuff cupcake_  is muffled by the jumper you throw in her face.

You spend hours walking around Graben and Kohlmarket, taking photos of pretty much everything you can see, dragging a reluctant Carmilla into plenty of selfies that she complains about, but you know as soon as you get back to Silas she’ll liberate your camera and have all the photos of the two of you either framed to sit on the desk or printed out to stick onto the wall. She takes her role as your unofficial tour guide very seriously, and chatters on animatedly about the history of the city, pointing out various monuments and launching into stories of their significance.

By the time you’ve finished your little tour around central Vienna and gone for dinner, it’s gotten dark, and Carmilla takes you to the Danube Tower overlooking the city.

Two hundred and fifty two metres above the city, the view of Vienna at night is spectacular, all the lights lit up against the darkness and reflecting off the dark water of the river. It all looks so pretty, and you say as much to Carmilla where she’s standing next to you with one arm around your shoulders, her fingers playing with a lock of your hair. 

“Hmm,” she hums thoughtfully. “Not as pretty as the stars. Almost as pretty as you. But I might be a little biased.”

Turns out the leather and the eyeliner and the sarcastic badass persona are all just part of front for what an utterly sappy hopeless romantic Carmilla is.

Carmilla is in the middle of telling you a story about managing to fall into the Danube whilst in her cat form, which you’re attempting to pay attention to, you really are, but she just looks so pretty that all you can really focus on is her eyes lighting up, her lips moving as she speaks and smiles, her eyebrows raising when she realises you’re not listening to a word she’s saying.

“My traumatising tale not interesting enough for you cupcake?” Her arm abandons your shoulder so she can dramatically clutch at her chest, over her heart. “That really hurts, I thought you were interested in my life.”

She laughs at her own joke – the leather and eyeliner is also a front for what a giant dork your girlfriend can be – before wrapping her arms around your waist and hugging you tightly. She kisses you on the cheek before her eyebrows furrow at the look on your face.

“What?” You can’t really blame her for looking mildly worried; you have been staring silently at her like a deranged serial killer for the past several minutes after all.

“Nothing, I just-“ you pause to bite your lip, because God you love her so, so much it’s ridiculous, and you had no idea it was possible to keep falling more in love after you’re already there. “I just really love you.”

She smiles at you – and yep, there you go, falling a little bit more in love again – and leans in to kiss you softly, mumbling  _I love you too_  against your lips.

Inevitably, as it does almost every time you kiss Carmilla, it doesn’t stay soft for long, and you turn to face her fully, wrapping your arms around her neck and deepening the kiss. She makes a small whimpering noise in the back of her throat when you bite her bottom lip, and when her hands drift dangerously close to your ass, you think it might be time to go back to the privacy of the hotel room. Carmilla agrees, if the whispered  _maybe we should go somewhere a little less public and you can show me how much you really love me_  into your ear is any indication.

/

The hotel room door isn’t even fully shut before Carmilla pounces on you, backing you up against the wall, kissing you hotly, and busying her hands with removing both your jackets. She’s wearing some form of barely-there lace masquerading as a shirt that you leave her to deal with, since you’ve already accidentally ripped a few of Carmilla’s shirts with your enthusiasm, and she wasn’t overly pleased about any of those times. 

Her fingers make quick work of unbuttoning your shirt, her lips following and kissing a hot path down your chest and stomach, and while she’s down there she unzips your jeans, helping you tug them off. The sight of Carmilla on her knees in front of you just adds to the ache between your legs, and you know she notices, looking up at you through her eyelashes from where she’s peppering kisses across your hips and lower stomach, just above the band of your underwear.

For a brief second you think she’s going to fuck you there against the wall, right by the door where people will probably (definitely) be able to hear you, but then she’s standing up again, disposing of her own shirt as she goes.

She leans back in to kiss you again, sucking on your bottom lip and swallowing your moan when her hands land on your chest, squeezing at you over your bra. You lean back from the kiss in a valiant attempt to catch your breath, and Carmilla just continues kissing along your jaw, nibbling on your earlobe at the same time as her hands push your shirt off your shoulders, and then slide around to your back and quickly divest you of your bra.

You decide she’s still wearing far too many clothes, and follow her lead, but your fingers fumble with the clasp of her bra when she bites down on your throat, sucking gently before releasing it with a quiet pop.

It took until about the third time you slept with Carmilla before you figured out she really has a thing for biting. Not like, actual vampire-y drinking your blood kind of biting (although you assume she likes that too, even though she’s never expressed any kind of interest in biting you  _during._  She does like kissing your neck a lot but that probably has more to do with the noises you make when she does it), but leaving hickeys and bruises and bite marks all over your body kind of biting.

(The first time she treats your neck as if it’s dinner you spent twenty minutes yelling at her after, because while she might have super fast vampire healing, you most definitely do _not_ , and  _dear God Carm I’m supposed to go meet my Lit. professor like this what the hell did you do to me_ , while she just smirks and promises never to do it again. She does, of course, and despite an endless stream of  _hey Laura Harker_  and stupid food puns from (mostly) LaFontaine, after the second time, and the third and the fourth and the fifth, you realise how much you like the feeling of being marked as hers.

Part of you wants to dislike it, because dammit you are a person, you are not some kind of trophy to be paraded around, or property to be claimed and marked, and you’re assuaged slightly by the knowledge that Carmilla definitely doesn’t see you as such, but the other part of you, that has become slightly more prominent since you and Carmilla started dating and subsequently sleeping together, really  _really_  likes it.

You aren’t sure if that’s entirely normal or not, but you don’t really care, and Carmilla certainly doesn’t either.)

“Bed,” you manage to gasp out, and you’re quite proud of yourself for remembering how to speak when her lips are sucking bruises into the base of your throat and her hands are all over your bare chest.

You walk her backwards towards the bed, pausing briefly to remove Carmilla’s pants and both your underwear, before pushing her down and scrambling on top of her with your legs either side of her waist.

Her fingers spend what feels like far too long dancing up and down your thighs, dragging her nails across your hips and around to squeeze your ass, and when she breaks the kiss to shower your chest with kisses, you groan out, “Carm,  _please_  fuck me already.”

You can feel her smirk where her lips are wrapped around your left nipple, but she finally gives you some relief to the ache that’s been building up since she kissed you on top of the Danube Tower, her fingers delving between your legs and pressing into you.

You toss your head back in pleasure, moaning her name amidst several  _oh God_ s and a few choice swear words, and Carmilla abandons your chest to bite at your earlobe, whispering filthy comments about how wet you are and how good you feel and how much she’s been wanting to fuck you all day.

The hand that isn’t currently between your thighs comes up to paw at your chest, one thumb brushing over your nipple and the other brushing over your clit while her lips descend on your neck. She’s pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses up and down your throat, but eventually her lips slow down to stop just over your racing pulse, sucking hard while her fingers curl inside you.

Her teeth scrape against your skin (you swear they feel slightly sharper than normal), you hear the faintest of whimpers coming from her, and you suddenly feel ten times closer to coming when the image of her biting you pops into your mind.

You know there’s some form of animalistic hunger deep inside her, a primal instinct to fuck and feed and take, and you know she’s perfectly capable of controlling it and that she would never in a million years intentionally hurt you, but sometimes you want her to lose control and just take you. To bite you and feed off you and fuck you into the mattress until you don’t remember your own name or where the hell you are, just because she  _can_.

Honestly, the fact that she’s a vampire who could kill you in a second should the urge strike her should not be as much of a turn on as it is. You’re not sure what that says about you; that something you should be terrified of, actually has the exact opposite effect.

Unfortunately, Carmilla has apparently decided tonight is a great night to do her annoying thing of going agonisingly slowly, dragging it out as long as she can. When her fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot you whimper out the first syllable of her name, followed by a desperate moan of  _please_.

She asks you what you want her to do, in that infuriatingly cocky voice you’re so attracted to, and it’s probably the lust pounding through your veins and your idiotic oxytocin-riddled brain that makes you blurt out, “I want you to bite me.”

You feel her whole body freeze, her fingers stilling inside you and her mouth pausing its assault on your throat. You whimper, rocking your hips into her hand because  _dammit no Carmilla don’t stop_.

She pulls back from your neck and stares at you with an unreadable expression, and you wonder if you’ve unwittingly broken some kind of unspoken rule in dating a vampire. Maybe  _don’t ask your vampire partner to bite you during sex_  is printed in size 72 text on page one of Dating A Vampire For Dummies. Maybe True Blood and The Vampire Diaries and all the others got it  _completely_  wrong and there’s absolutely zero correlation between feeding and fucking.

But then her eyes are flickering down to your neck and her already almost black eyes are darkening a little bit more and those are  _definitely_  fangs you catch a flash of, and you’re relatively sure she wants to bite you just as much as you want her to.

But just in case, you start backtracking and give her the option to say no. “I mean if  _you_  don’t want to then it’s perfectly fine I just kind of, you know, assumed, which I really shouldn’t have done so I’m sorry, and obviously I would never make you do something you don’t want to do but-“

“God, Laura,” she groans, her eyes fluttering shut briefly. “Of course I  _want_  to. It’s just…”

She trails off, biting her lip and looking away from you, like she has no idea how to articulate her aversion to biting you. The pained look on her face, and the fact that she’s  _Carmilla_ , is giving you a vague idea of what it could be though, so in an attempt to placate her, you cup her cheek, turning her head and you lean in to kiss her gently. Well, as gently as you can when two of her fingers are still buried inside you.

“You biting me isn’t going to make me suddenly see you as some kind of monster,” you mumble against her lips. “I love you, okay?  _All_ of you. That includes the undead fanged parts of you.”

Carmilla smiles softly at you. “You’re sure this is what you want?” She asks, her voice an octave or two lower than normal, her gaze drifting down to stare hungrily at your neck again.

“Absolutely,” you reply, dragging her face back to yours so you can crash your lips together, and her fingers  _finally_  start moving again.

Her other hand shifts around from your chest to slide up your back, her nails raking faint red lines into your skin that make you shiver, before tangling in your hair, gently tugging your head backwards and exposing the full length of your throat to her.

She kisses your neck softly a few times, and you feel two sharp points dragging over your hammering pulse point, before she bites down and her fangs sink into your flesh.

You would be slightly embarrassed by the guttural strangled noise that rips its way out of your throat, if her biting you didn’t feel  _so_  good. It hurts, a lot more than it did that brief moment she bit you during the missing girls phase, for the first few seconds, before blossoming into pleasure that you feel throughout your entire body, and  _oh my God why did it take you eight months to ask her to do this._

Your hands move from where they’re gripping onto Carmilla’s shoulders to tangle in her hair, keeping her pressed tightly against your neck as you moan shamelessly and beg her not to stop, rolling your hips down to meet her fingers.

Her free arm drops from your hair to wrap tightly around your waist, holding you up so you don’t fall backwards, which is entirely possible due to the euphoria flooding your overheated body. You faintly register the noise of her humming contentedly against you, lapping and sucking at your neck while her fingers continue to pound into you. You shudder when her tongue slides across your skin, licking up stray drops of blood that leak out from her lips.

She pushes a third finger into you and curls them roughly, and the sting on your throat combined with her fingers inside you and her thumb grazing over your clit is enough to throw you over the edge with a long drawn out moan of Carmilla’s name.

When Carmilla eventually pulls her mouth away from your throat, you discover a new fact about your girlfriend that in retrospect, should not shock you in the slightest. She’s a messy eater; there’s blood smeared across her lips, on her fangs, dripping down her chin, and for some bizarre reason that you decide not to analyse at this current moment, the sight of her red stained mouth is one hell of a turn on. She barely has time to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand before you’re tugging her into a hungry kiss, your tongue immediately licking past her fangs and into her mouth.

By this point, you’re used to kissing her and being able to faintly taste blood, so it stopped bothering you a long time ago. This time it’s much more prominent, but the coppery metallic taste of your own blood isn’t quite as unpleasant as you’d imagined it would be, and after a moment of stunned surprise, she’s kissing you back just as eagerly.

“Wait,” she mumbles into the kiss when you try to push her down onto her back. “Hold on.” Her voice is lower and rougher than normal, and you have to resist the urge to drag her into another hungry kiss.

“Are you– was that alright?” She asks tentatively, her fingers brushing over the fresh bite marks on your neck as she inspects them carefully. It stings slightly, but not in a bad way. Similar to the way all your muscles ache after she’s been fucking you for hours and you’ve lost count of how many times she’s made you come.  _Definitely_  not in a bad way.

“What do you think?” You chuckle, kissing the tip of her nose. She pouts up at you in the most adorable way, and still looks concerned. “I’m okay Carmilla, I promise. I wanted you to do it, remember? I liked it.”

You whisper that last part, and that seems to assuage her worry. Her eyes flicker down to your mouth and she bites her lip. “Yeah?”

“Definitely,” you reply, and this time she doesn’t resist when you place your palms against her chest and push her down against the pillows.

(Vampire saliva might stop the bites from continuing to bleed, but it unfortunately has no impact on your slow human healing rate, so you spend all of your visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum the next day overheating in a scarf that you refuse to take off, pointedly ignoring Carmilla snickering quietly to herself the entire time.)


	2. Amsterdam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla doesn't let something as inconsequential as a crowded bar stop her. Laura exacts her revenge someplace less public.

LaFontaine and Perry are on their own European travels as well, and your routes overlap for the last two days you’re in Amsterdam. Perry drags you all to a fancy restaurant overlooking Keizersgracht that she found last time she was in the city, and Carmilla directs you to a bar for drinks afterwards.

Two rounds in, LaFontaine is chattering on about Danny and Kirsch, and Carmilla interrupts to make a comment about how their kid is going to pop out and already be taller than you, before taking a sip of her overpriced drink that you can’t pronounce the name of. She smiles sweetly when they both laugh, a completely fraudulent one that makes her look totally innocent, as if her right hand isn’t currently buried between your legs underneath the table. She raises her eyebrows and smirks almost imperceptibly when you exhale a heavy breath as she drags her fingertips achingly slowly over your underwear covered clit.

Her hand landed just above your knee innocently enough after you sat down, Carmilla immediately pressing against your side, and you thought nothing of it. Carmilla likes touching you, whether it’s just holding your hand walking down the street, or idly stroking your bare arm while you’re cuddled up watching a movie, or tangling her fingers in your hair when you’re going down on her. And because you’re an idiot, you didn’t stop her when she slowly started inching her hand up your thigh, and only realised what she was plotting when her fingers slid under the hem of your dress.

Appropriately enough, the conversation turns to the Sexmuseum, which you and Carmilla visited yesterday (you don’t think you’ve ever been so thankful that you turned out gay, and even Carmilla looked slightly traumatised by some of the… displays) and LaFontaine and Perry are trying to decide whether or not to risk their mental health by going. Perry asks you how much the entrance fee is, and your reply chokes off into a whimper, which you quickly disguise with a cough, when Carmilla abruptly yanks your underwear aside and slides her fingers through your wetness.

All three of them give you a weird look, Carmilla’s completely faked and slightly more amused than the other two’s, and you stutter out a terrible lie about how you think you might be getting a cold.

Neither of them seem to notice anything, and Perry excuses herself to go to the bathroom, while LaFontaine heads towards the bar to get more drinks, leaving you and Carmilla alone. Your table is tucked away in the very corner of the darkened bar, and you’re in between Carmilla and the wall, so when she turns her body to pin you with the filthiest look you’ve ever seen, you feel very much like trapped prey.

She withdraws her hand, and you catch a brief glimpse of the sticky wetness coating her fingers before she’s sucking them into her mouth, licking at them obscenely and moaning quietly enough that only you can hear. Your pulse quickens and drops to throb between your legs at the lust blown stare and predatory smirk being directed your way.

You’re having trouble deciding whether you want to kiss or slap that annoyingly smug smile off of her stupid pretty face.

She lunges forward to kiss you, and you whimper when you taste yourself on her lips. You groan her name disapprovingly when her hand makes its way back into your underwear, and you really should tell her to keep her hands to herself, because you’re dangerously close to doing something stupid that will not only get you thrown out and possibly arrested, but also scar LaFontaine and Perry for life.

At the sound of her name, Carmilla pulls away from your mouth with a last bite to your bottom lip, before peppering kisses along your jaw towards your ear.

“You know, if really want me to, you could just ask me to stop,” she points out smugly. “You have two perfectly functioning hands, you could physically make me stop." 

You glance over her shoulder to make sure no one is paying you any attention, biting your lip hard to subdue the whimper that threatens to come out when she circles her fingertips around your clit.

“But considering you’ve so far done neither of those things, and have instead actively encouraged me by spreading your legs wider and wider, I think it’s fair to say you don’t actually want me to stop,” she continues in that obnoxiously attractive low voice that she knows turns you on.

“There’s also the fact that for someone who is trying to pretend they are not very, very into this, you are unbelievably wet right now,” she purrs, punctuating the word  _wet_  by pushing the tips of her fingers into you ever so slightly, before nipping your earlobe and giggling lowly at the quiet moan you can’t prevent coming out.

She drags her lips back towards your mouth, sucking your bottom lip into her mouth and sinking her teeth into it, and you’re honestly surprised you’re still conscious. Still conscious, and letting this happen.  _Actively encouraging Carmilla_ , as she put it.

You’re two seconds away from just pulling her into the bathroom and letting her have her way with you, when someone clears their throat loudly, and you reluctantly drag your mouth away from Carmilla’s to see LaFontaine grinning widely as they place the tray of drinks down and Perry rolling her eyes.

“Can we not leave you two alone for five minutes without you doing… that?” Perry huffs, dramatically gesturing her hand in your direction. Carmilla snorts in amusement – it’s hardly the most scandalous thing they’ve ever accidentally witnessed you doing – but dutifully leans away from you slightly, and proceeds to strike up a conversation about the Anne Frank House with the pair of oblivious redheads.

For a brief moment you think she’s going to stop the torture her fingers are wreaking between your legs, but then they start brushing over your clit again, which sends that thought, along with most of your other coherent and rational ones about how you’re going to get your  _very_  painful and  _very_  slow revenge on your  _very_  irritating girlfriend, flying straight out of your head.

In reality, it probably hasn’t been all that long, but it feels like hours pass while Carmilla slowly rubs at you, occasionally pushing her fingers in and causing your whole body to shudder and your fingers to tighten around your drink.

Perry and LaFontaine get caught up in a heated debate about the correct pronunciation of the House of Bols, and while they’re not paying attention to you, Carmilla takes the opportunity to double her efforts against your clit. One of your hands drops onto her thigh and you dig your nails in hard enough that there’s probably going to be half moon crescent shaped marks on her, even through her leather pants, and your other hand is gripping onto your drink tightly enough that you briefly wonder if you’re actually going to accidentally break the glass.

You’re biting your bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, and even in the dimly lit bar you can see Carmilla’s eyes dilating when they dart down to stare at your mouth.  _Good_. You get a brief flash of smug revenge knowing that Carmilla will be able to smell the lust burning through your veins.

“Carmilla,” you hiss quietly under your breath, knowing she’ll be able to hear it despite the noise of the bar. You fully plan on telling her to stop before you can embarrass yourself completely, but her fingers graze against your clit in just the right way, and the words  _oh God please_  are coming out of your mouth instead.

You’re probably flushed red enough that you could pass for a short fire hydrant, and you’re mildly concerned you’re going to break your jaw with the force of gritting your teeth together so you don’t start gasping Carmilla’s name.

She leans over towards you, and under the guise of kissing you chastely on the cheek she growls  _I want you to come now Laura_. Praying the other two are still oblivious, you squeeze your eyes shut and your whole body tenses and then shudders as you come with a tiny gasp that you can’t prevent from escaping from your mouth.

Vaguely, you register Carmilla whipping her head round to talk to, and hopefully distract, Perry or LaFontaine, and when you eventually regain focus on the conversation, Carmilla is giving them directions from their hotel to Vondelpark, acting as if nothing R-rated had just occurred below the table.

You have to clamp your jaw shut again when Carmilla deliberately flicks against your clit before she pulls her hand out of your – probably ruined – underwear.

You reach out for your drink with very shaky hands, taking a gulp in a frantic attempt to cool yourself down, and nearly choke on it when you risk a glance in Carmilla’s direction. She isn’t even bothering to try and hide the way she’s sucking lewdly on her fingers – claiming she spilled some of her drink when LaFontaine gives her a weird look – and it’s with a sinking feeling you realise you’ll probably be sitting here for another few hours or so, with soaked underwear and aching for Carmilla to fuck you properly someplace less public.

/

You have the keycard to your hotel room, but it’s lost somewhere in the depths of your bag, and it’s proving exceedingly difficult to find, especially since Carmilla is currently pressing you against the door, hips pushing against your ass, hands tugging insistently at the hem of your dress, and lips showering the back of your neck with kisses.

“Carm- _ugh_ , stop, just for a second and let me find the damn key,” you try to say as evenly as possible, something that fails miserably when she latches onto the skin just below your ear and sucks hard, your resulting moan echoing throughout the thankfully empty hallway.

“Someone could see us,” you gasp, frantically increasing your attempts to find the stupid keycard.

“Someone could easily have seen us in that bar, didn’t stop you from letting me touch you until you came all over my fingers though, did it?”

_Jesus._

Your hand  _finally_  closes around the blasted keycard where it’s somehow made its way into one of the zipped pockets inside your bag, and you hurriedly jam it into the door, failing to unlock it the first time because you yank it out way too quickly when Carmilla’s hands shamelessly grope your chest over your dress. You push back against your annoying girlfriend, shoving her off of you just long enough for you to get the stupid door to actually unlock. Good timing as well, since you notice a family with several small children rounding the corner at the end of the hallway just as you grab the lapels of Carmilla’s jacket to pull her into the room.

You find yourself being pushed against the door as soon as it swings shut, and then Carmilla’s everywhere at once, invading your personal space and kissing you and pawing at your chest and grinding your hips together.

Originally, your intentions had been to drag Carmilla back to the hotel room and then spend half the night exacting your torturous revenge on her, but if she’s set on fucking you against the wall first, then that isn’t exactly an unwelcome diversion from your plan.

She grabs your hands and drags them up above your head, using her left hand to keep them pinned there, while her right hand disappears under your dress, her nails lightly scratching up your inner thigh. She doesn’t even bother trying to rip any of your clothes off, just tugs your drenched underwear aside and immediately pushes two of her fingers into you.

“Oh my  _God_ ,” you moan out as one long drawn out noise, past caring if anyone in the hallway can hear you.

“You know,” she begins as conversationally as if she’s discussing the damn weather, her voice a ragged whisper in your ear. “That’s the main disadvantage to fucking you in such a public place, not being able to hear you desperately gasping my name when I make you come,” she pauses to bite at your earlobe, curling her fingers inside you and chuckling lowly when you whimper her name. “You know how much I love hearing you scream, and you’re usually so loud babe. Must’ve been hard for you to not make any noise.”

There’s the sound of fabric tearing, and  _dammit Carmilla_  you do not have an infinite supply of underwear, and that’s the third pair she’s ripped this month already, before she’s throwing the remains of your already-ruined-anyway underwear to the side and driving her fingers back into you.

“But I bet you wanted to, huh? How much did you want to scream my name when you came?”

She shuts up for long enough to kiss you heatedly, and you manage to wrap one leg around her waist without falling over and taking her with you, whimpering desperately when her fingers slide in deeper.

“How difficult was it for you to keep a straight face? To carry a conversation while my fingers were inside you? How much were you aching for me to just spread you out on the table and fuck you properly, even with all those people watching?”

“Carm I’m gonna– oh God please don’t stop,” you trail off into a moan, your head slamming back against the door. Carmilla’s head drops down and she latches onto your neck, kissing and sucking across your throat. Her fingers speed up inside you, and you’re glad she’s pressed so close since if she wasn’t holding you up it’s highly unlikely your trembling legs would be able to support your weight on their own. 

You try to move your hips to meet her thrusts, but you can barely move from where Carmilla has you immobilised against the door.

(And  _wow_  okay you had no idea this was a thing you could be into until now, but it is  _totally_  a thing that you’re into and will need to revisit at a later date.)

Thankfully she doesn’t seem interested in reducing you to a whimpering mess and making you beg before she finally lets you come for once. You’re still so turned on from earlier that you’re hurtling over the edge in an embarrassingly short time, moaning and whimpering into Carmilla’s mouth while her fingers continue circling your clit slowly.

“That was quick,” Carmilla proudly points out the obvious.

“Shut up,” you say in retaliation to her comment and the extremely pleased look on her face, but the impact is ruined a bit by how of breath you sound.

“Maybe you should make me,” she replies, predictably. You’d think after three hundred years Carmilla might have some better lines than that. 

/

Your patented Laura Hollis’ Three Point Revenge Plot Against Annoying Vampire Girlfriends gets put on hold  _again_  when she pushes you down onto the bed once all items of clothing have been discarded haphazardly all over the floor, and promptly disappears down your body, holding down your hips and licking you towards a third orgasm.

When you finally remember how to breathe again and focus on Carmilla, she’s sitting back on her haunches, your legs either side of her waist and her hands on your knees, keeping your legs spread lewdly in front of her. She’s staring down at you heatedly, no doubt admiring the plethora of bite marks and hickeys decorating your body.

Using her being distracted by her own smug narcissism to your advantage, you quickly flip your positions so she’s sprawled on her back with you straddling her. She blinks, looking mildly confused at the sudden change, unimpressed by a human getting the drop on her, and turned on now that you’re on top of her and she can feel your wet centre pressing against her lower stomach.

Her arms circle around your waist when you duck down to press your lips together, her fingers tracing lightly up your spine. She mumbles something unimpressed sounding when you reach back and pry her hands off you. “What are you–”

“No touching,” you interrupt, pressing her wrists gently into the mattress. ”I had to suffer through that stunt you pulled in the bar earlier–“ you ignore Carmilla’s smug  _don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it, cupcake._ “–Now it’s your turn. If you touch me, I’ll stop."

Carmilla bites her bottom lip, her eyes fluttering shut and a tiny sigh coming from her when you lean back down to pepper kisses along her jaw and down her neck, biting gently at her pulse point. You make it as far down as her collarbone before she completely disregards your rules and her hands are on you again, this time sliding up the back of your thighs.

“I said,” you say lowly, grabbing her hands and placing them back on the bed, smugly noting how blown her pupils are. “No. Touching.”

“Fine,” she huffs. “No touching. All right, got it. Anymore rules for me, Miss Hollis?”

“Just one,” you smile innocently, leaning down to kiss her neck and then bite her earlobe the same way she’s so fond of doing to you. “You’re not allowed to come until I say so.”

You giggle lowly against her when she moans quietly, her head tipping backwards to expose more of her throat to you.

Carmilla lasts longer this time, but she slips up again when your tongue is circling lightly around her right nipple. Her fingers shoot up from the bed to tangle in your hair when you graze your teeth against it, and you abruptly pull back, ignoring the unimpressed whine of your name.

“You know the rules,” you singsong, far too amused at the grumpy look on your girlfriend’s face.

“Never been very good at following rules though, have I poptart?” She smirks at you, like she thinks you’ll cave to letting her touch you with just one seductive smirk and food-based nickname.

“So I can see. Guess I’ll just have to start  _again_ , maybe you can keep your hands to yourself this time.”

Carmilla’s head falls back against the pillow, her hands clench in the sheets, and she whimpers quietly as you go back to dusting soft kisses down her throat. She moans wantonly when you bite down, sucking bruises into the sensitive parts of her throat and collarbones; her chest arches up towards you when your mouth closes over her nipple, your tongue flicking against it repeatedly. 

Amidst the low moans and quiet whimpers of your name are pleas to move faster, hurry the fuck up, and get a move on, all of which you pointedly ignore, dragging it out as long as you can and lavishing every inch of her body with attention from your lips, tongue and teeth.

There’s a soft thump as her head falls back against the pillows and her breath hitches when you start kissing the inside of her thigh. You do the same on the other leg, brushing your lips lightly along it and pulling away just before you reach where she wants your mouth. 

Her nails drag along the fabric of the sheets while she squirms beneath you, but this time she manages to keep her hands off you, and by the time you’re settled in between her spread legs she’s managed to refrain from touching you. Also, you note, she’s very, very wet.

“Wow,” you say smugly, tracing your fingertip over her soaked entrance in the faintest of touches. “Seems like you’re surprisingly into not being the one in control for once." 

A ragged whimper of, “Shut up,” comes from somewhere above you.

“Don’t think you’re really the one in a position to be giving orders here.”

Whatever smartass reply she’s about to fire back with gets cut off when you press a kiss against her clit, opening your mouth and flicking your tongue against it. The long, drawn-out moan that falls from her lips makes you whimper into her, and you lick at her again, dragging your tongue through the length of her, and despite the fact she’s already made you come three times tonight, your own pulse drops to throb between your legs at the taste of her flooding onto your tongue.

One of her arms is flung up above her head, clinging onto one of the pillows like it’s the only thing stopping her from floating away into nothingness, and her other hand is gripping onto a fistful of the blanket that’s half-hanging off the bed. Out of the corner of your eye you see her hand let go of the blanket and start inching towards you, before she evidently realises what she’s doing, and drops it back down to the bed, grabbing at the sheets.

Good. You didn’t particularly want to have to stop anyway.

Her hips twitch upwards with each stroke of your tongue, and when they jerk up against your mouth slightly harder, you glance up to see her head thrown back against the pillows, dark red bruises littering the pale skin of her neck, and that she has her hands on her own breasts. Technically, you think that might be breaking your no touching rule, although you never said anything about her not touching herself, but the sight sends a flash of heat through you, so you let it slide.

When her moans increase in frequency and pitch, and the movements of her hips start to get more frantic, you use the last of your willpower and self-control to pull away from her, licking your lips and relishing the taste of her.

“What– Laura no, don’t stop,” she whimpers, trying to glare at you, but her look of confused frustration just looks adorable, not threatening in the slightest.

You take your time crawling back up her trembling body, stopping to lave kisses all over her hipbones and her abs, to lightly rake your nails up her sides, to drag your tongue over her nipples and smirk up at her when her blown pupils stare hungrily down at you.

She let go of her chest just after you started your ascent back up her body, and her arms have resumed their earlier position, one above her head and one flung out to the side with a death grip on the sheets. Her fingers are twitching like she’s dying to reach out and touch you, and even though you know if the positions were reversed she’d never be so nice to you, you acquiesce her silent plea, reaching up and taking ahold of her hand above her head, while your other one travels back down to between her legs.

Her fingers squeeze around yours and you rest your forehead against hers, pressing your fingertips against her wet clit and circling it a few times before dropping them lower and pushing them into her abruptly. Carmilla tosses her head back, moaning out a long ragged sound that you know she’ll never own up to making later.

You keep pumping your fingers into her slowly, curling them every so often to pull deep, guttural moans out of her, and there’s an endless stream of broken gasps and low whimpers coming from her mouth, the way she’s desperately clawing at the bed sheets with her free hand an indication of how close she is. 

“Uh uh, not yet, sweetheart,” you whisper into her ear with a chuckle when you feel her start to clench down on your fingers. You slide them out, ignoring her displeased whine, and run them either side of her clit, just barely brushing it. Nowhere near enough friction to get her to come, but enough to keep her on the brink.

“Wha– Tell me what you want and I’ll do it,  _God_ , what do you want me to,  _fuck_ , do?” She manages to get out around several particularly carnal sounds.

“I want to hear you beg, Carmilla,” you murmur, smirking against the patch of her neck you’re busy marking when she whimpers breathily.

“Fucking- Oh God, _fuck_.” Her gasp of relief turns into a moaned out plea of your name when you slide your fingers back into her and keep them there, unmoving. Her hips jerk up against your hand, a desperate whine falling from her mouth as she tries to fuck herself on your fingers. “Laura,” she groans, dragging out the last syllable. “Please.”

“Please what, Carm?” You lace your voice with as much faux innocence as you can, slowly starting to move your fingers and shuddering at the filthy moan Carmilla makes.

“Please, Laur– oh my fucking–“ she pants desperately, her hips frantically rocking up to meet your too-slow thrusts. “I, fuck, please fuck me please let me come please please please.”

Honestly, you thought she’d hold out a bit longer than that, but  _God_  hearing a three-century-old badass vampire literally begging for you to fuck her does not fail to send a flash of white-hot lust through you.

She swears in at least two different languages, then in what you think is Russian, when you drive your fingers back into her and swipe your thumb across her clit. You drag your tongue up her throat, bite her earlobe and tug on it, before whispering hoarsely into her ear, “Now, Carmilla, I want you to come now.”

You curl your fingers, rubbing the tips of them against the spot that makes Carmilla scream, brushing your thumb over her clit once, twice, and then she’s clamping down on your fingers. You think you catch your name, the word  _fuck_  and several  _oh my God_ s amongst all the incoherent moaning as her body shudders underneath you, her eyes squeezed shut in pleasure. Her fingers tighten their grip around yours, and then she comes hard, her lips parted in a wordless scream.

You slide your fingers in and out of her a few more times until she relaxes bonelessly against the mattress, a dopey post-orgasm smile on her face.

“Am I allowed to touch you now?” She asks, her eyes still closed. You laugh, telling her that she can, and cuddle into her side, burying your face against the side of her neck and slinging your arm across her waist. She turns her head to press her lips against your forehead, and her arms come up to circle round you, her palms smoothing up and down your back. 

“You know,” Carmilla starts, her voice slightly muffled by your hair. “If you were to do that more often, I wouldn’t exactly complain. At all. Just so you know.”

“You liked it,” you say smugly, because  _of course_  the big bad terrifying vampire would have a secret submissive streak.

“Shut up,” Carmilla grumbles, and you don’t even need to be able to see her face to know she’s rolling her eyes dramatically. “Of course I liked it. I like anything that involves you and being naked.”

“You’re so romantic,” you mumble around a yawn, snuggling closer to Carmilla.

The steady rise and fall of her chest under your head and her fingers tracing aimless patterns on your back has nearly lulled you to sleep when you hear her sleepily mutter  _I love you so much,_  and you smile against her, quietly returning the sentiment before you both drift off to sleep.


	3. Copenhagen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rain stalls Laura's intentions of going out for dinner, so she decides it's a perfect opportunity to spend the evening holed up in the hotel room with a naked Carmilla. Well, an almost naked Carmilla.

You spend the first day in Copenhagen at Ordrupgaard, which after asking Carmilla  _what the hell is that and how do you pronounce it_ , you discover is an art museum.

Your knowledge of anything art related is probably about the same extent as Carmilla’s knowledge of Disney movies, with the exception of The Lion King — “ _I am not crying, I just have something in my eye, shut up Laura._ ” — and The Jungle Book — “ _This movie is giving panthers a bad rep, we most certainly do not sing and dance like that, we are magnificent fearsome creatures of the— Laura stop laughing at me_ _._ ” You’ve heard of Picasso and Van Gogh and Da Vinci, you could  _maybe_  pick Water Lilies by Claude Monet out of a line up of other similar paintings of flowers, and you know Carmilla’s favourite art movement is Surrealism. Not that you actually know anything about Surrealism, of course. You think there might be an artist with a moustache involved, Deli or Dale or something, the one who painted those weird melting clocks, that’s about it.

Carmilla, on the other hand, is a never-ending fountain of knowledge for art, chattering at top speed almost non-stop the entire walk around the museum. You get slightly (very) lost somewhere between her explanation of the differences between Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism, and rattling off what sounds like the entire Wikipedia article for Eugène Delacroix. Whoever that is.

“Who’s Manet? I thought his name was Monet?” You ask midway through Carmilla’s narration while you’re standing in front of a painting showing a gondola floating along one of Venice’s canals.

“Two different people, cupcake,” she chuckles. “Édouard Manet considered himself a realist artist, Claude Monet was one of the main founders of Impressionism. They were both French though, and I’m pretty sure they knew each other," she pauses, and her eyes light up in a way that you know means another "exciting" fact is coming your way. "You know the term Impressionism actually comes from one of Monet’s early paintings,  _Impression, soleil levant_. Unfortunately that painting is on display at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, not here.”

You’ll probably have forgotten all of that five minutes from now, but you appreciate Carmilla’s enthusiasm. It’s not often she gets this animated about things that don’t involve sex, sarcasm, or mocking Danny.

“I honestly have no idea how you manage to remember all of this,” you tell Carmilla when she informs you that the Venice painting is from 1875.

Carmilla raises her eyebrows. “Says the person who could tell exactly what Doctor Who episode you caught me watching by a single blurry paused frame.”

“That was one time, and anyway—“

“And I’m pretty sure that if I were to ask, you could reel off the title of every single Buffy episode, in chronological order.”

“There is nothing wrong with—“

“And if I handed you a piece of paper and a pen right now, you could probably draw me a detailed diagram of exactly how everyone in A Song of Ice And Fire seems to be related to each other.”

“Carmilla, shut up.”

She smirks at your annoyed huff, but thankfully stops teasing you. Instead, she launches into a spiel about Fauvism, lacing your fingers together and dragging you towards a large display of extremely colourful paintings, all by someone called Henri Matisse.

One big advantage to indulging Carmilla’s inner art nerd, is even if you’re not entirely sure what she’s talking about a good majority of the time, most of the people and movements she mentions seem to be French, so you get to appreciate her accent slipping further and further until she sounds like a native Parisian. She’s in the middle of telling you a story about meeting someone called Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence in the 1860s when she apparently gets bored of English and rattles off an entire damn sentence in French. You thank God and whoever or whatever Carmilla believes in that the room you're currently in is almost empty, because that's what makes you snap and drag her behind a huge sculpture of what looks like a very large eggplant, shove her against the wall and kiss her.

You try to keep it relatively chaste since you’re still in public, and the eggplant sculpture can only keep you hidden for so long, but Carmilla whimpers quietly into your mouth and  _God_  your self control can only last so long.

“Didn’t realise post-impressionism is what does it for you, sweetheart,” she quips with a smug grin when you pull back from her.

“Oh, I have absolutely no idea what you’ve been talking about for at least the past hour, but as long as you keep talking with that French accent…” You trail off and lean back in to kiss her meaningfully. 

“I didn’t realise you had a thing for people speaking French,” Carmilla mumbles against your lips, and you don’t buy the innocent tone of her voice for a single second.

“I have a thing for  _you_  speaking French,” you reply, hoping that no one happens to be looking in your direction when Carmilla starts kissing along your jaw towards your ear.

“I will definitely keep that in mind,  _chéri_ ,” she purrs, smirking when you shudder slightly. “And as interested as I am in the fact that my speaking in other languages apparently turns you on this much,” she glances down at your chest pointedly, and you realise she can hear how quickly your heart is thumping. “That might be a discussion better suited for a time when there isn’t a class of thirty schoolchildren in the room next to us.”

You groan when Carmilla slips out from between you and the wall, chuckling under her breath. That is  _not_  helping.

You’re pretty sure Carmilla gets some sort of sadistic kick out of torturing you, because she keeps you at the museum for another two hours, going on about Renoir and Rembrandt this or Romanticism and Dadaism that, all wrapped up in that annoyingly attractive, definitely exaggerated French accent.

“You know,” she muses thoughtfully as you’re perusing the gift shop. “All these paintings and sculptures by the most revered artists of all time, and you’re still the most beautiful work of art in this whole building.”

It’s one of the sappiest romantic things you’ve ever heard her say, and when you turn around to beam happily at her for being so cute, you realise she’s wearing a very familiar smirk, the one she gets right before she says something wildly inappropriate— “And a masterpiece like you really deserves to be pinned up against the wall.”

You smack her on the arm, roll your eyes and try to keep the fond amusement out of your voice when you snap, “ _Carmilla we’re in public!_ ” at her.

(Later, when Carmilla has you pinned up against the shower wall, you’ve forgotten all about her unsuitable-for-public comments, and instead you’re much more focused on her fingers working inside you and making you come at least three times, all while she whispers a steady stream of French into your ear.)

/ 

You spend the second day at the Tivoli Gardens, and surprisingly, Carmilla only complains twice; the first time about having to get up so early (12pm), and the second time when she spends fifteen minutes rifling through her suitcase looking for the wide brimmed hat that's sitting right behind her on the chair.

She gleefully chases you around in the bumper cars, crashing into you and slamming you into the side, much to your unamusement, then makes it up to you by buying you your body weight in candy floss, looking a mix between horrified and impressed at the speed you wolf it down. She kisses you at the top of the Ferris Wheel, even smiling when you ask to take a photo together, she actually sounds genuinely excited when she suggests going on the Hans Christian Andersen ride, and insists on being the one to pay for you both when you want to go round the aquarium.

Maybe the real reason Carmilla doesn’t go out in the sun all that often is because it actually makes her a normal, nice person. Either that, or aliens have abducted your grumpy girlfriend.

The third day she’s back to her normal self, grumbling and huffing when you drag her shopping along Strøget, and then to the National Museum of Denmark later in the afternoon. Once you’re back at the hotel you’re about to ask if Carmilla has any suggestions for where to go for dinner, when you look out of the window and realise how heavily it’s pouring with rain.

“Or, you know, never mind. Let’s just stay in and order room service,” you say, turning back around to face Carmilla, where she’s lounging on the bed and flipping through a guidebook to Copenhagen with an unimpressed expression on her face, muttering under her breath about incorrect translations.

You argue over what movie to watch on the hotel’s pay-per-view, and after you remind Carmilla of The Valentine’s Day Incident That Shall Not Be Named — or  _The Valentine’s Day Incident That Laura Should Stop Bringing Up To Embarrass Her Amazing Wonderful Super Hot Girlfriend_ , according to Carmilla — she hands the remote over with a glare.

(Nothing cast a dampener on your romantic trip to Innsbruck quite like discovering while you were trying to check out of the hotel that Carmilla had accidentally ordered nearly twelve hours of porn over the duration of your two day stay.)

Carmilla steals most of your fries when your room service arrives, makes a huge amount of noise sucking down a packet of blood while you’re on the phone to Danny, and makes it about a third of the way through Easy A before she gets bored and starts pawing at your waist and kissing at your bare shoulder. You last about ten minutes trying to ignore her before you grab the remote, hit the off button and turn the movie off just as Amanda Bynes’ character is saying  _seems as though someone’s on a downward spiral_ , and then turn your full attention to a very smug Carmilla.

Less than ten minutes later, she’s fully on top of you, her hips snug between your legs and her hands working their way through the buttons of your shirt. Her top has already been discarded to the floor, and once yours is unbuttoned completely, she abandons kissing your mouth to slowly drag long hot kisses down your throat, along your collarbone and across your chest. Your eyes roll back and you whimper quietly when she tugs the cup of your bra down and sucks your nipple into her mouth, and when her teeth graze over it, your nails dig in where they’re tracing gently over her shoulders. Her hips jerk forward at the abrupt sensation, grinding hard against you, and the motion makes you realise how annoyingly not naked both of you are. It also reminds you of a certain purchase you made in Amsterdam that’s still hidden in your suitcase.

“Mmf, Carm, hold on,” you mumble against her lips, pushing against her shoulders until she’s pulling back and looking down at you questioningly.

“I, uh—“ you pause, nerves starting to set it, since you’re not entirely sure how to bring it up. Is there a certain protocol one should follow when asking one’s girlfriend to fuck them with a strap-on for the first time? “I may have done something.”

You mentally smack yourself in the face. If there is a certain protocol, you doubt it’s that; that did not sound promising or encouraging at  _all._

“I’m going to need you to be a little more descriptive there, poptart,” Carmilla shoots back with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, um, there’s something I’ve always wanted to try, like in bed, sex-wise,” you stutter, ignoring the way Carmilla’s lewd smirk widens, and deciding to get right to the point. You don’t know why you’re so nervous; you’ve had sex with Carmilla plenty of times by now, in a variety of positions and situations and locations, so this should hardly be a big leap to take. “And um actually, you know, maybe it’s better if I just show you, save me from ruining the mood anymore than I already have with my incredibly awkward rambling.”

Carmilla laughs, reminds you that she thinks your awkward rambling is  _endearingly cute_ , and then flops onto her back when you push her off you and climb off the bed. You can feel her eyes boring into your back as you open the closet and drag the topmost suitcase out of it.

You rummage through your suitcase until you find the nondescript box that you bought in Amsterdam and then hid in a pair of pajama pants that you packed but haven’t actually worn yet, holding it up for Carmilla to see. The look of genuine interest and mild confusion on her face tells you she has no idea what you’re holding, and you mentally congratulate yourself for managing to keep something a secret from your nosey girlfriend.

Depositing the box onto the bed in front of Carmilla and taking the lid off, you can feel yourself starting to flush a bright scarlet. “I realise I probably should’ve asked your opinion on this before I spent so much money on this thing because holy wow they are more expensive that I thought they’d be, and oh God I definitely should’ve asked your opinion because you might not even be into it but…”

You trail off, and despite the numerous times you’ve had sex with her, you still feel slightly awkward holding up a harness and bright red dildo in front of your girlfriend, who is staring at you in rapt and slightly stunned silence. Her mouth is hanging open slightly, and  _wow_  it isn’t often that you render Carmilla, Mistress of The Snark, completely speechless.

“When did you even buy that?” Is what Carmilla eventually says, not taking her eyes off the toy. She looks a confused combination of apprehensive and turned on. Mostly turned on, you note with relief. 

“Second day we were in Amsterdam. You didn’t feel well cause of that bad blood your ‘vampiric associate’ gave you, so you stayed in and slept most of the day while I went out shopping.”

“Clearly a successful shopping trip,” Carmilla deadpans. “Have to admit cupcake, I’m surprised, and mildly grateful, that you managed to restrain yourself from buying a sparkly one.” 

“Oh I considered it,” you reply, because you totally had  _and_  they had been on sale, and Carmilla looks mildly horrified. “But I didn’t think a bright pink sparkly sex toy was really your thing.”

Carmilla snorts, and replies, “You know me so well,” and then her expression and demeanour changes in a split second, the amused smile of your girlfriend morphing into the hungry seductive smirk of a predator about to pounce on her prey. “So, how do you want to do it?” She purrs, biting her bottom lip as her gaze flickers between your face and the toy.

“Um, what?” You squeak, gaze dropping to Carmilla’s chest when she starts to lean forward. There’s different ways of doing it with a strap-on? You assumed there was only one way of putting it on; clearly you’re more out of your depth than you realised. 

“I mean,” she continues, shifting so she’s on all fours and slowly prowling like a damn cat along the bed towards you. “Do you want to fuck me with it?” Her voice drops to a rasped whisper as she reaches the end of the bed, rising up on her knees and wrapping her arms around your neck. “Or do you want me to fuck you with it?”

_Oh._

You gulp audibly, Carmilla smirks, and you really didn’t think this far ahead. You walked past the shop, saw them on display in the window, spared a brief thought as to how open and immodest Amsterdam is, and on a reckless whim that you’re pretty sure is Carmilla’s influence, you went in and bought one.

The image of her on top of you and her hips moving between your legs is flitting through your mind slightly more often than the other way around, so you swallow again in an attempt to wet your very dry mouth, and stutter out, “Um, I want you to, uh, do me.” 

The filthiest smirk you’ve ever seen spreads over Carmilla’s face, and before you can even blink, she’s pulling you forward and yanking you into her lap. Her lips are on your throat almost immediately, and you drop the toy and harness onto the bed next to her in favour of wrapping your arms around her neck.

Carmilla paws at your unbuttoned shirt, throwing it across the room once she’s gotten it off you, and her hands slide up your back, unhooking your bra quickly and tossing it in the direction of your shirt. One of her hands comes up to your chest, her fingers toying with your nipple, and you arch into her touch when she kisses her way down from your neck, her mouth closing over your other nipple and her tongue swirling around it.

Her tongue and teeth and lips lavish attention across your chest, her free hand roaming over the bare expanse of your back, her nails lightly raking across your skin whenever you tug on her hair or quietly whine her name. She pulls gently at your hair until your head is tipping back, exposing your throat fully so she can nip and kiss at the skin there, each press of her lips and swipe of her tongue sending a jolt of arousal through you.

The ache between your legs is beginning to get unbearable, and considering how much Carmilla gets turned on by your own breathy whimpers, the erratic thumping of your heart and the smell of your arousal, you’re slightly impressed at her restraint that she doesn’t have you pinned against the mattress yet.

You, on the other hand, don’t have quite as much restraint.

“ _Carmilla_ ,” you whine, dragging out the last syllable and tugging roughly at her hair. “Come  _on_. I want you to fuck me.”

Carmilla groans against your chest, before pulling back and you nearly lose it at the hungry look on her face. “Someone’s impatient,” she says with a smirk, before she picks you up like you weigh less than a feather, stands up and turns around, then places you down on the bed gently.

You watch Carmilla quickly stripping off her own remaining clothes before tugging the straps over her hips in a trance, deciding that reckless impulses that you’ve probably somehow absorbed from Carmilla aren’t necessarily a bad thing after all.

“Have you, uh, ever used one before?” You ask, heat pooling in your stomach at the visual of Carmilla wearing nothing except for the harness.

“Nope," she replies, and you raise your eyebrows in surprise. "Female sexuality was a pretty taboo subject in the eighteenth century, so sex toys weren’t really a thing back then. Sparkly or otherwise,” she smirks as she climbs back onto the bed. ”Have you?”

“No,” you shake your head. You have read an inordinate amount of fanfiction on incognito browser, however you don’t think this is the appropriate time to mention that. “At least, not with another person.”

Carmilla pauses where she’s busy unbuttoning your pants and stares at you in half-wonder, half-lust, and you can only imagine what she’s picturing. “That,” she starts, leaning down to kiss along your thighs as she slowly peels your pants off. “Is something you’re going to have to tell me about in a much more detailed manner at some point, you know.”

She’s definitely going to hold you to that, and you can’t help the laugh that bubbles out. She finishes getting your pants off and they join the pile of clothing on the floor, and she returns to pressing kisses all over the inside of your legs as her fingers hook in the waistband of your underwear.

“Well I’ve always wanted to do it like this,” you say, propping yourself up on your elbows to watch her drag your underwear slowly down your legs. “Just you’re the first person I’ve been with that I’ve trusted enough and wanted enough to do it with."

Carmilla growls quietly at the implication of you having slept with other people, her possessiveness that you should not find as absurdly attractive as you do sending a shiver down your spine.

Once you’re completely naked, Carmilla prowls up until she’s hovering over you, her hands sliding up your legs and pushing them apart so she can settle in between them.

The toy brushes against you and at your quiet gasp, Carmilla smirks, her arm disappearing down between your bodies to take ahold of it, pressing the tip of it against you. She drags it further up to bump against your clit when you whine her name, rubbing it in agonisingly slow circles, and you dig your nails into her shoulders and buck your hips up to try and get more friction.

The pressure of the toy against your clit disappears, a second later being replaced by her fingers. They brush over your clit a few times, before she slides a finger into you, pumping it shallowly then adding another.

“God,” Carmilla groans under her breath, her head dropping down to rest against your shoulder. Her mouth connects with your neck, and she kisses you, sucking at your racing pulse point harshly until you know there’s going to be a long-lasting bruise there.

She husks  _you’re so fucking wet sweetheart_ into your ear, and your eyes roll back when she pushes a third finger in, your breathing punctuated by low desperate moans. If she keeps this up you’re going to last an embarrassingly short time once she finally gets the damn toy inside you.

“Ugh, Carm, come on,” you moan, grasping at her hair and tugging her head towards you so you can kiss her. “I bought that thing for a reason,” you mumble against her mouth, sucking her bottom lip into your mouth and sinking your teeth into it. The rhythm of her fingers inside you falters, and you ignore the fuzzy wave of pleasure that runs down your spine when her thumb swipes at your clit, instead focusing on dragging your lips along her jaw and up to her ear. “I want you to fuck me with it, now."

A low whimper of your name falls from her lips, and surprisingly — you’re half-convinced Carmilla feeds off being as annoying as possible almost as much as she feeds off blood — she complies, obediently sliding her fingers out, and then the toy is pressing against you again.

Carmilla watches you with an enraptured stare as she slowly sinks it into you, her pupils completely blown and the tips of her fangs peeking out from behind her lips. She pauses each time your breath hitches (although it’s mostly in pleasure and not pain; it might be a lot bigger than Carmilla’s fingers, but you’re like, insanely turned on right now) until she’s fully inside you, her hips flush against yours.

“Are you okay?” Carmilla asks, her lower body frozen in place and the fingers of her left hand tracing lightly over your cheekbone, before she cups your face gently.

“Yes, very much okay, just um, give me a second,” you reply breathlessly, squirming slightly underneath her, shuddering when the toy nudges against every sensitive spot inside you at once. “It feels uh, different.”

“Good different?” Carmilla asks with a faint smirk, and her hips shift the barest amount, but you feel it everywhere and oh God she needs to do that again.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she chuckles in response to your whimper, and slowly starts moving her hips.

She quickly finds a good rhythm, rocking her hips down and grinding the toy against you, and it feels unbelievably good. Tossing your head back in pleasure when the toy drags against all the right spots, you moan loudly when Carmilla goes faster. She leans down to kiss at your neck, before nipping and sucking a trail down your throat and across your collarbones towards your chest.

You know she’s a lot more affected by your moans and whimpers than she likes to admit, spurred on by the noises you make like some kind of primal animal, a point proven when you groan her name wantonly as her lips wrap around your nipple, and her hips thrust into you harder.

It’s still not enough though, and while you adore the times she goes slowly and gently, right now you just want her to take you. Instead of bothering to vocalise it, you slide your hands down her back until you’re grabbing at her ass, encouraging her to push into you harder.

Of course, because she’s Carmilla, she takes her sweet time picking up the pace, but eventually she gives you what you want, fucking you hard and fast until you’re a panting, wanton mess under her.

“Oh my fucking— God,  _fuck_ ,” you whine for the hundredth time in five minutes, your head falling back against the pillows and your body arching up towards Carmilla. You’re still sprawled on your back on the bed, Carmilla on top of you with one hand keeping your thigh wrapped around her waist, the other against the mattress by your head supporting her weight, her mouth attached to your neck sucking yet more hickeys onto your skin, and her hips relentlessly pounding between your legs.

She snickers against you, grazing her teeth against your skin as she drags her lips up to your ear. “Wow cupcake,” she purrs, and you moan when the toy attached to her hips hits a particularly sensitive spot inside you. “If I’d known this is what it takes to get you to swear this much, I would’ve bought one of these myself months ago.”

Stringing sentences together beyond  _oh my God_  and monosyllabic grunts of  _fuck,_  and  _more_ and  _Carm_  is proving to be fairly difficult, so all you can do is moan and claw at her back, trying to pull her impossibly closer, while she continues whispering to you. Her low voice barely wavers, like this is all completely effortless for her and she’s not exerting any energy thrusting into you.

You hazily wonder if it’s actually possible to die from sheer incredibleness. Death by dildo. Obliteration by orgasm. Fatal fucking.

The hand that’s holding onto your thigh moves to slide along your ribcage until she reaches your chest, rolling your nipples between her fingers before replacing them with her tongue, and then her hand is drifting down to skate feather light across your clit. The two sharp points of her fangs drag over your skin as she switches to lap greedily at your other nipple and white-hot pleasure rushes through your veins.

“God I love hearing you swear,” Carmilla murmurs, bringing her head up to nip at your lower lip. You don’t even recall saying anything beyond the usual gasps of Carmilla’s name and unintelligible whimpers, but you tend to say a  _lot_  of inane crap when she’s inside you, most of which you would never be able to say out loud normally without stuttering and blushing tomato red, so it doesn’t really surprise you.

But as Carmilla has pointed out, she likes all the variations of  _fuck me, oh God yes right there, harder, fuck Carmilla_  that you babble, so.

You never really used to be one for dirty talk, but then again you also never used to be one for buying sex toys from slightly seedy shops in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, or letting your girlfriend finger you under the table at a very crowded bar, or enjoying being bitten by your vampire girlfriend, but Carmilla seems to inspire certain things in you.

She knows exactly how to touch you and exactly what sort of filthy comment to whisper raggedly into your ear to turn you into a trembling turned on wreck. You’re almost embarrassed by how easy it is for her to work you up so much, but her voice shakes ever so slightly when she growls  _you like me fucking you like this, don’t you? Like I’m claiming you, like you belong to me?_  And you know it’s getting to her too.

She shudders and moans when you rake your nails down her back, and when her mouth latches onto your neck and she bites down with still-human teeth, you let loose a half-delirious stream of  _oh my God Carm yes fuck oh God_.

“Come on Laura, I know you’re close,” Carmilla whispers into your ear, tugging on the lobe with her teeth. “Come for me sweetheart, I want to hear you scream.”

Your hips jerk up wildly to meet her thrusts, her wet fingertips tracing patterns roughly against your clit, once, twice, and then you’re gone.

“Fuck fuck  _fuck_ , oh God Carm, I’m gonna—“ you trail off into incoherent moaning as your orgasm hits you like a freight train, your back arching, your toes curling and pleasure surging through your entire body.

Carmilla doesn’t stop or slow down, she continues to pound ruthlessly into you, and her fingers slide over your clit while she growls, “I know you can come again Laura, I want you to come again.”

Stars explode behind your eyelids as you rocket over the edge again at her voice, riding on the aftershocks of the first one. You’re shaking like a leaf, moaning out Carmilla’s name in ecstasy, everything’s out of focus except for Carmilla’s quiet whimpering in your ear, and you’re mildly concerned you’re actually going to black out. Or possibly die.

Carmilla ruts against you like an animal in heat for a few more seconds, before she comes with a groan and collapses on top of you in a spent heap.

She stays sprawled on top of you for a few moments, letting you catch your breath, before she nuzzles against your neck and presses a soft kiss over the array of bruises and bite marks you’re sure are decorating your skin.

“Wow."

“Wow,” you repeat in a dazed voice, and there’s a muffled laugh from where Carmilla’s mouth is still pressed to your neck.

“You should definitely impulse buy more often.”

You laugh, lazily stroking your hands up and down Carmilla’s back, and turn to kiss her forehead, your eyes flickering shut as you go. The force of your orgasms and Carmilla’s warm weight blanketing you is making you feel sleepy.

“I definitely need a nap, but once I can actually feel all my limbs again, it’s your turn.”

(And the image of Carmilla with her head thrown back, moaning your name shamelessly while she rides you definitely makes its way to the number one spot of your go-to masturbatory fantasies.)


	4. Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paris: the city of love. That is, if ‘love’ is a synonym for things such as multiple orgasms, or handcuffing your girlfriend to the bed and making her beg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for mentions of suicide/suicidal thoughts, and brief references to carmilla’s ptsd  
> sry about the angst, idk where it came from either but lbr carm’s still gonna have bad days even when laura’s around, so

A car horn loudly honking outside the window on the street below wakes you up the second morning you’re in Paris. You groan, pushing your face into the pillow and snuggling further backwards into Carmilla’s arms. You have no idea what time it is, but if it’s anytime before at least 11am — which it feels like — then it’s too early.

Carmilla mumbles something in her sleep, her arms tightening around you and her face nuzzling further into the back of your neck, and despite how much your feet still hurt — Sacré Cœur to Notre-Dame was a much longer walk than  _it’s not that far cupcake, I promise_  suggested, and Carmilla doesn’t like the Metro — and the way your entire body aches in the best way possible — turns out Carmilla really likes getting fucked with a strap-on and your back still stings slightly from the vicious rake of her nails somewhere around her third orgasm — you smile like a fool. You rarely feel happier than when you wake up tangled up with Carmilla.

She’s soft, and warm (although that’s usually just due to the blankets you’re buried under), and likes falling asleep completely wrapped around you, pressed close enough so that you can feel her lips moving whenever she talks in her sleep, something that when she’s awake she steadfastly refuses she does.

You think it’s cute, the sleepy mumbles and noises she makes, and Carmilla usually huffs something about how she’s a  _terrifying ferocious predator I’m not allowed to be cute fear me for I am the night_.

The bed in this ludicrously expensive hotel room is ridiculously soft and comfortable, so it isn’t long before you’re dozing off again, snoozing for you don’t know how long, but the next time you wake up it’s to a sleepy grumble behind you that by now you know means Carmilla’s just woken up.

You turn over so you’re facing her and she immediately pulls you close as possible and buries her face against your neck. It’s never stopped amusing you how cuddly Carmilla is, especially when she’s still half-asleep, and you press a kiss to her forehead before saying, “Morning sleepyhead.”

She grunts what you assume is a good morning, followed by sweetheart, cutie, or one of her many edible nicknames for you.

“What do you want to do today?” You ask. Carmilla’s a lot more familiar with Paris than with Vienna or Amsterdam or Copenhagen, so along with the obvious sightseeing of the major tourist spots that you're interested in visiting, half the time you’ll probably spend in lesser known cafes or museums that Carmilla likes, or walking through the park or along the Seine while Carmilla rambles on about the many previous years she spent in Paris.

“Sleep,” Carmilla mumbles, then pauses, shifting back a minuscule amount so she can look up at you through her messy bangs, before adding on, “And you.”

“In that order?”

Her hand on your lower back drifts down a few inches towards your ass. “Maybe not.”

You laugh, shuffling down until you’re level with her and leaning forward to kiss her good morning. Much as you’d like to spend the entire day in bed with Carmilla, you’re starving so, ignoring her displeased grumbling, you hop out of bed and start rummaging through your suitcase for something to wear.

“Come on, we’re going to breakfast,” you tell her, and there’s more grumpy grumbling. “Then after we can go to that art museum you wouldn’t shut up about in Copenhagen, the marmoset one or whatever. With that impressionable guy.”

“You mean Musée Marmottan Monet?” Carmilla sounds extremely offended that you didn’t remember the ridiculous name word for word.

“Yep, that one,” you say, walking into the bathroom and switching the shower on. You ask her if she’s joining you, and there’s a brief moment of silence before a loud thump that you assume is Carmilla scrambling out of bed and promptly tripping over the blankets in her haste to follow you into the bathroom.

She takes you to breakfast at a little café a few blocks from the hotel that apparently does amazing pancakes. At her recommendation, you order a gigantic stack of them, douse them in half a pint of maple syrup and wolf them down while Carmilla stares at you over the rim of her coffee cup and then asks if you’re trying to set some sort of record for the world's quickest onset of early heart failure.

You walk to the museum via the Jardins du Trocadéro, pausing to take eight million photos of the Eiffel Tower from every angle, and you drag Carmilla into a selfie in front of it that you promptly send to LaFontaine, Perry and Danny. Perry replies with a picture of the horizontal rain currently assaulting Frankfurt, Danny with a picture of Kirsch fast asleep on her bed with the caption  _I prefer my view, no offence_ , which Carmilla makes a disgusted gagging noise at, and LaFontaine just sends back  _fuck both of you_.

When you eventually reach the museum, Carmilla excitedly points out the painting,  _Impression soleil levant,_  and pouts when you don’t look as thrilled as her. It’s pretty, you suppose. Not as pretty as Carmilla, obviously, but still pretty.

Just as you’re leaving, she casually mentions that there’s a new exhibit at the Louvre, and before you know it you’re nodding yes to spending a few hours at the Louvre and then something called Espace Dalí, which after some questioning you discover is another art museum devoted to someone called Salvador Dalí. Which after some more questioning you discover that, “Yes Laura, that’s the guy with the moustache that you kept calling Santiago Deli.”

You still can’t really get  _that_  excited by art, but you’d gladly spent an entire month following Carmilla around various museums and letting everything she says go flying over your head, just because of how much Carmilla lights up at it and how happy it seems to make her.

/

It’s not until you’re on the train heading towards Versailles that you realise something is off with Carmilla the morning of the third day. For starters, the compartment you’re in is empty aside from you and her, and her hands haven’t strayed anywhere except to rub her thumb over the back of your hand, and you’re pretty sure she’s just doing that absent-mindedly. You’d expected her to be pawing at you almost as soon as the door closed behind you, and have to fend off her dumb comments of, “So I’m only allowed to fuck you in public when there’s an audience like the bar in Amsterdam?”

She’s being weirdly quiet, and she isn’t even looking at you. Instead she’s just staring out the window. You nudge her with your shoulder until she turns to look at you, and you ask her if she’s okay. She smiles at you, and points out that she’s with you, so of course she’s okay, but you’re still not entirely convinced she’s telling the truth.

You vaguely recall Carmilla mentioning something about Versailles during the sock puppet debacle, and you instantly feel like a complete asshole because oh  _God_  is it going to bring back horrible memories of her Mother? You don’t know how long they spent at Versailles, but considering it was the only place Carmilla referred to by name, you’d guess it was a fairly significant portion of time.

You tentatively bring it up, and by ‘tentatively’ you mean you immediately launch into full-speed babbling about  _oh God Carmilla I’m sorry if Versailles is like a bad place for you because of your Mother I didn’t think I’m sorry we don’t have to go if you’re not comfortable_  and so on.

Carmilla blinks, and it takes her a few seconds to catch up with your rambling, before she lifts the hand that isn’t holding yours to press a finger against your lips to shut you up.

She smiles fondly at you and tells you that she doesn’t have any aversion to visiting Versailles, and just attributes her lack of chattiness to still being half-asleep. The look on your face must not convince her that you believe her, because she leans forward to kiss you, murmuring, “I’m okay, I promise,” against your lips. She spends most of the remaining train ride making out with you, until you get interrupted by a middle aged couple opening the door and sitting down across from you a few stops before Versailles, and as you’re walking around the palace she seems her normal sarcastic self, but you still can’t quite shake the feeling that something’s wrong and she just isn’t telling you.

Obviously you’re not going to push her to talk about something she clearly isn’t ready, or doesn’t want to talk about, but still.

It isn’t until much later, when you’re back in the city and walking along by the Seine hand in hand, heading back to the hotel after a dinner that Carmilla was back to being oddly quiet at, that you discover you were indeed right, and Carmilla finally tells you what’s wrong.

You don’t realise she’s stopped walking until your arm jerks backwards where your hands are still linked, and when you turn to look at her questioningly, she’s staring off to the side with an unreadable expression on her face. You turn your head to follow her gaze, and realise there’s a gap in the buildings and you have a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower.

You’re about to rifle through your pockets to find your phone and demand the millionth selfie of the day, Carmilla being weird or not, when you suddenly find yourself with an armful of vampire.

“Carm, what the—“

It registers in your confused brain that her shoulders are shaking the same time you hear her sniffle, and you bite back a dumb comment about  _vampires don’t cry ringing any bells_  when you realise she’s  _really_  crying. Her arms tighten around your shoulders, her face pressing against your neck, and you promptly wrap your arms around her, stroking your hands up and down her back and murmuring what you hope are soothing words to her.

“It’s okay Carmilla, I’m here. You’re safe, I’ve got you.”

Quiet sobs wrack her entire body for a good five minutes, and you try to quell the panic and concern building in you because Carmilla doesn’t really cry. Ever. So you can’t help but be exceptionally worried as to what could possibly make her break down like this.

Thankfully the path you’ve been walking along is empty, so there’s no one around to give you weird judging looks, and then get scared away when you give them your best Carmilla-esque glare. Although you probably look about as threatening as a teddy bear when you glare at people, so it might not have quite the same impact.

“Sorry, um,” she mumbles when she pulls back, wiping at her tear-stained face with her sleeve. Her eyes are slightly red and her mascara is streaked down her cheeks, but she still looks breathtakingly beautiful. Like always. “I’m sorry I’ve been so weird and distant today.”

“I may have noticed something was up when it was me who made fun of that security guard that was wearing socks and sandals, and not you,” you say, trying to lighten the mood, and thankfully she smiles. Albeit weakly, but it’s still a smile. You soften your expression and brush her hair out of her eyes. “You can tell me what’s wrong, you know. Obviously you don’t have to explain if you really don’t want to, but whatever it is, I promise you can talk to me.”

Carmilla stares at you for a long moment. “You’re too good for this world Laura,” she eventually murmurs, almost to herself. “You’re so…bright. I don’t want to be the one that dulls that light with more of my tragic backstory.”

“Carm, hey, I’m not going anywhere,” you say, one of your hands cupping her face and the other one playing with her hair. “No matter what it is, if it’s something you did to someone, or something someone did to you, it doesn’t matter; I’m still going to love you. You don’t have to hide any part of your past from me, I can handle it.”

She kisses you for long moments and she tastes like tears. When she pulls back you note that, thankfully, she looks marginally less broken than before. She leans her face into your hand and shuts her eyes, exhaling softly.

“Before Mother told me to come back to Silas last year, I was in Edinburgh. There’s a cathedral there, St. Mary’s Cathedral, it’s about three hundred feet high,” she pauses, and takes a deep breath before continuing, her voice shaking. “A year ago today, I tried jumping.”

Cold, cold dread settles in your stomach, as Carmilla continues in a forcedly detached sounding voice.

“Clearly it didn’t work, it didn’t work in St. Petersburg or Seville either, but I just hoped…third time’s a charm and all that. For three hundred years I wanted to—“ she chokes off into a sob, but doesn’t push you away when you pull her against you. “I hated myself. Hated what I was, what Mother had turned me into, the loneliness,” she whispers.

You say, “You’re not alone anymore Carm, you have me,” and she smiles, and lets you wipe away a few errant tears.

“I know, I know, it’s just— It was this date, and the Eiffel Tower is so  _big_  it just reminded me of how far down the ground was and—“ she forces out a teary laugh, and you know if she doesn’t laugh then she’ll start crying again.

You pull her into a hug, kissing her cheek and wrapping your arms tightly around her, and you just hold her, because as much as you love Carmilla, you don’t really know what else to do. She’s had to suffer through over three hundred years of abuse and torture, and regardless of whether she tells you every single detail from all of those years or not, you doubt you’ll ever be able to fully grasp the depth of her suffering. But she’s told you that it helps when you hold her like this, so that’s what you do.

Eventually you ask, “Do you still want to?” And when she stiffens in your arms you instantly want to take it back.

Smooth, Hollis, smooth.

But before you can awkwardly trip over your words trying to backtrack with your usual tact and elegance, she quietly replies, “No,” with the clarity of absolute certainty. “I don’t want to die, not anymore. Not now that I actually have something worth living for.”

She kisses you softly, then wriggles out of your arms and offers you her hand, which you gladly take, restarting your walk back to the hotel. Talking about her past takes a lot out of her, so you don’t push her for any other details.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, just as you veer away from the Seine towards the street your hotel is on.

“For what?”

“For being here. For being you,” she pauses, her fingers squeezing yours lightly. “For loving me.”

(When she pushes you against the mattress, kisses you and tells you to touch her later that night, you whisper  _I love you you're safe I've got you I love you_  into her mouth when you press your fingers into her. She gasps your name quietly against your lips, and when she comes, it’s with a breathless whimper of  _I love you too_.)

/

The last day you’re in Paris is technically your eight-month anniversary, and despite both of you agreeing that eight isn’t really all that significant a number, Carmilla still insists on taking you out to dinner at a supremely fancy restaurant.

(Surprisingly, she doesn’t spend half the evening pawing at your leg under the table, but manages to inflict her usual public torture on you when she orders some form of cake that’s drenched in chocolate sauce for dessert, and spends a lot longer than necessary licking the sauce off her spoon. You think you deserve some form of medal for refraining from pouncing on her right there in the middle of the restaurant.)

When you’re walking down the Champs-Élysées after, Carmilla stops you at a liquor store to buy some extremely expensive looking champagne, and when you raise your eyebrow at her in question, she wraps her arm around your waist, yanks you close and whispers in your ear that she has a surprise for you, in a voice way too innuendo-laden for public.

And well, it’s Carmilla, so obviously  _surprise_  was a euphemism for something sex-related, but you didn’t expect this.

Your room is on the seventh floor, and has a lovely uninterrupted view of the Eiffel Tower, which right now would be all bright and lit up and looking pretty against the evening sky, but you can’t find it in yourself to care about anything outside the hotel room, not when a black lingerie clad Carmilla is handcuffed to the bed.

It’s possibly the hottest sight you’ve ever witnessed; Carmilla staring at you with dark eyes, her teeth biting into her lower lip, her tousled hair fanned out across the pillow, only covered by what is essentially two tiny scraps of black lace. Obviously Carmilla could be wearing a ripped, dirty garbage bag and you’d still think she was the most beautiful person in the world, but you’re extremely thankful for her penchant for blowing ridiculous amounts of money on barely there underwear. You’re slightly impressed with yourself that you’re still standing, especially when she shifts slightly and the light from the bedside lamp reflects off the shiny metal of the handcuffs binding her against the headboard.

When you’d admitted you wanted to tie Carmilla up and fuck her — an admission she had dragged out of you in Copenhagen by keeping her tongue pressed against your clit but not letting you come until you had told her one of your fantasies in vivid detail — she proceeded to drop an extortionate amount of money on specially made ”vampire proof” handcuffs. You don’t know what kind of demonic vampiric sex shop she acquired them from, and you don’t plan on asking.

You’re still slightly amazed Carmilla so eagerly agreed to this; she’s tied you up a few times before, but never the other way around. You might be pretty adept at getting Carmilla to do what you want by now, especially in bed, but she has a lot of triggers (your heart aches every time she jumps at an unexpectedly loud slamming door, or sleepily asks you to keep the owl light switched on while you sleep) and you always assumed this would be one of them.

“You still breathing over there, cupcake? You look like Christmas, your birthday, and possibly yourself, have all come early.”

Clearly not. She seems perfectly okay.

“I’m fine. Definitely, completely, very fine. More than fine, in fact,” you ramble like a moron. “I just, you know, want to be completely sure you’re okay with this, and you’re not just doing it because I want to?”

“I’m doing it because we both want to. We’ve discussed boundaries and safewords and all that plenty of times remember? Blindfolds, gagging, choking, things like that, they’re all definite no’s, but this isn’t anything I can’t handle sweetheart. I promise. ”

(Your safeword is werewolf, something Carmilla suggested and you’d objected to initially, telling her, “This is an important conversation Carm, I’m being serious,” to which she replied, “So was I. Trust me, nothing is going to turn me off faster than hearing you bringing up tall, red and furry in the throes of passion.” So it just kind of stuck, and you will never, ever be informing Danny of this.)

“I’d tell you if anything changed and I wouldn’t have let you do this if I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure. Besides,” her voice drops lower and she arches an eyebrow meaningfully, smirking as her gaze roams over your underwear covered body before stopping somewhere below your stomach. “Seems like you’re into this enough for both of us.”

You stare at her for a second in confusion, before blood rushes to your face when you catch on. Having a girlfriend that can literally smell when you’re turned on can be extremely inconvenient sometimes.

“And it’s not like this is our first foray into mild bondage; you have tied me up once before,” she continues with a completely straight face. “Although I’m assuming this time will be infinitely preferable due to the fact that you aren’t wearing a dress that looks like a rejected costume from the Wuthering Heights movie, the remaining members of the dimwit squad aren’t all here brandishing stakes and glaring at me like I’m going to eat you, and somehow I doubt my lunatic brother is going to come bursting through the door, untie me, and then try to kill you.”

You can’t help but laugh, your nerves starting to dissipate at the smile on her face.

You drain the remains of your glass of champagne, setting it down on the table next to the empty bottle that Carmilla had demolished most of earlier, before clambering onto the bed and settling on top of her with your legs either side of her waist.

You lower your head to kiss her, sucking on her tongue until she moans quietly, before moving lower to press your lips against her jaw, and then further down to dust soft kisses across her neck.

“You trust me, right?”

“More than anyone else in the world,” she sighs happily, turning her head to the side and offering you more of her throat to kiss.

You shift so you’re straddling her left leg, pushing your thigh between hers and nipping at her throat. A few seconds later she mimics you, pushing her thigh up against you, and you automatically grind down against her, tearing your mouth away from her neck when a sharp gasp rips its way out of your throat.

Carmilla’s eyes get even darker, if that’s even possible, when you sit up slightly and roll your hips down against her harder, a quiet moan tumbling from your lips. You’ve been in a dizzy haze of arousal since you first saw the handcuffs dangling off Carmilla’s finger and then the subsequent blur of messy kisses and clothes being torn off, your body temperature feels like it’s spiked twenty degrees and Carmilla just feels  _so_  good that you can’t help but continue rutting against her. You feel a bit bad not doing anything to Carmilla, but she growls, “Keep going,” when you start to slow down, so you gather than she’s enjoying the view.

And well, if she’s going to watch you, you may as well put on a show. You’d never call yourself an overly sexual person (eighteen years of an overprotective father hovering around seemingly all the time wasn’t exactly conducive to a very active sex life), so despite the huge amount of sex you and Carmilla have, there’s still some residual self-consciousness from your pre-Carmilla days when you shamelessly grind against your girlfriend’s thigh while she watches, but the heated look in her darker than usual eyes spurs you on.

She tries to lunge towards you when you drag your clit over her thigh at just the right angle and throw your head back to moan her name, and you catch sight of the murderous look she shoots at the handcuffs.

Carmilla tenses her thigh on your next grind down and you whimper, pitching forward onto all fours above her. She immediately leans up to attack your neck with kisses, biting and sucking at the skin of your throat. The metal of the headboard squeaks loudly, and you glance up. The handcuffs might be vampire proof, but it’s unlikely the bed is too, and you don’t particularly want to have to explain to the hotel staff how you managed to rip an entire headboard off one of their beds. Nor do you want the Twilight similarities hanging over your head every time you think about handcuffs and Carmilla from now on.

“I want to touch you,” she whines, dragging her lips up your throat to tug on your earlobe with her teeth.

“I’m–  _God_ , I’m supposed to be the one touching you,” you point out.

“I can wait,” she murmurs, smiling against your neck at the shudder that goes through you when she pushes her thigh hard against you.

As pleasant a deviation from your original plan as this is, Carmilla’s the one that let you tie her up and purred  _you can do whatever you want to me cutie_ , which is not an offer you will be passing on, so ignoring the ache between your legs and the way Carmilla pouts at you, you shuffle back and away from her.

She opens her mouth and you can tell by her smirk that she’s probably about to make some lewd comment about how wet you are or how close she knows you are, but you shut her up by leaning down to kiss her.

It’s a little odd not feeling her hands all over you, but it’s also a pretty heady rush of power that you basically have complete control over her. You kiss her until she’s whimpering quietly into your mouth, and when her fangs nip at your bottom lip, you let her lick the drop of blood that appears away before moving your mouth to kiss along her jaw.

You continue your assault on her neck, kissing and licking and sucking at all the sensitive spots until she gasps your name breathlessly and bucks her hips up against you. You move further down, sliding your lips along her collarbones and the top of her chest, and then further down still until your mouth is hovering right over her bra-covered breasts. There’s a quiet thump as her head falls back against the pillow when you yank the cup of her bra down, dropping your head down to wrap your lips around her nipple, sucking softly and dragging the flat of your tongue over it.

Carmilla squirms underneath you, her shallow breathing getting faster when you kiss a path across to her other breast. The fact that oxygen isn’t even necessary for her, her breathing is just muscle memory, makes your ego balloon every single time you reduce her to a panting mess.

Usually by this point she has her hands tangled in your hair, or gripping onto your shoulders, but instead all you hear above you is the clink of metal-on-metal when she tugs on the restraints, before she groans quietly when she remembers she doesn’t have her hands free.

“You still okay up there?” You ask with a grin, lifting your head up from her chest after you’ve finished lavishing the same amount of attention and hickeys on both of her breasts.

She glares at you, rolling her hips up against you purposely and you faintly hear her whine  _fuck_  under her breath when you start making your way down from her chest to the top of her underwear, pressing wet kisses against her stomach as you go. You make a few comments about how much you enjoy grinding against her abs until you come, smirking when you feel her hips jolt up slightly or hear her try to muffle a moan.

You place your palms on her thighs, and push them apart, before settling down on your stomach in between them. A grin tugs at your lips when you notice how soaked her underwear already is, and you make a mental note to do this more often, since  _wow_ , turns out being handcuffed and completely at your mercy to be fucked senseless is a huge turn on for her.

“You’re so wet,” you try to sound smug, but you mostly just sound breathless. Carmilla moans quietly when you lightly press your fingers against her, rubbing them in slow circles over her covered clit.

Ignoring her protests when you abruptly pull back, you sit up and hook your fingers into the hem of the underwear, pulling them down her legs and tossing them behind you when you get them off. Bypassing your original intentions of going slowly, you resume your position between her spread legs, pressing a few kisses on the inside of her thigh before sliding your tongue through her.

Her breath hitches, she moans your name loudly, and there’s another metallic clink when she tugs at the handcuffs. You set a quick, steady rhythm, her back arching and her hips jolting up with each swipe of your tongue, and she groans your name raggedly each time you swirl your tongue over her clit.

You keep going, licking long, broad strokes through her and lightly sucking on her clit until she’s a trembling, whimpering mess beneath your tongue, and when she moans the way she does when she’s like five seconds away from coming, you slow down, until you’re barely touching her.

“Fuck, no no no, what the  _hell_  Laura, don’t stop,” she pants breathlessly, lifting her hips off the mattress and trying to get your mouth back on her.

Chuckling against her, you slide your tongue back into her wet heat slowly, scraping your fingernails up from their tight grip on her waist, across her stomach and onto her chest. Another metallic clink, and she throws her head back and makes a loud, strangled noise when you push your tongue inside her at the same time as you roll her nipple between your fingers.

“Ugh, come on, please,” she gasps desperately when you drag your tongue up to brush far too lightly over her clit.

“Please what?” You ask in your most innocent voice. “Tell me what you want, Carm.”

“I— Jesus  _fuck_ ,” she groans when you latch onto her clit and suck hard, flicking your tongue against it repeatedly, and she shifts so her leg is resting on your shoulder and her heel is digging into your lower back, trying to get you impossibly closer. ”I want you inside me.”

You glance up, and heat surges through you when you take in how utterly wrecked Carmilla looks. Her whole body is quivering, you can see her abs twitching below her heaving chest, and her half-lidded eyes are almost completely black where they’re staring pleadingly at you. This time you get to see the way she tugs hard at the handcuffs instead of only just hearing the now very familiar clinking noise as she struggles.

Abruptly, you stop once again, and Carmilla only has time to get out, “What the f—“ before your fingers are on her, rubbing slow circles while you slowly start kissing your way back up her body, pressing your lips against her thighs, her hips, her stomach, her chest.

She squirms and whines underneath you, jerking her hips up into your fingers, either trying to get you to go faster or trying to get them inside, and when you eventually reach her mouth, she whimpers out a desperate cry of, “Laura, please fuck me,” against your lips.

(Your heart swells, and although it might fall more under  _elaborate torture methods_ than  _sweet and gentle sex_ , knowing she trusts you this much to let herself be so open and vulnerable to you just makes you love her even more.)

Without warning, you slide your fingers into her, driving two of them knuckle deep and cutting off her less-than-polite  _Laura I swear to God if you don’t fuck me_  and turning it into an incoherent moan, slamming your fingers into her over and over and curling them roughly until she’s coming with a long and low moan of what you think is your name mixed with the word  _fuck._

Just as her trembling body starts to relax, you shuffle back down quickly, drop your head and replace your fingers with your tongue, licking and sucking at her relentlessly until she’s coming again, then again, both times with a loud scream of your name.

“Oh my God,” Carmilla pants, once you’re finished licking her through the aftershocks and her breathing has returned to a semi-normal pace. “Oh my  _God_.”

“That good, huh?”

She glances down to where you’re still between her legs, resting your head against the inside of her right thigh. “Don’t let it go to your head cupcake,” she says with a raised eyebrow.

“Too late,” you beam at her, laughing when she rolls her eyes affectionately.

Heaving yourself up and leaning over to grab the key for the handcuffs off the bedside table, you reach up to let Carmilla free. She groans when she moves her arms down, rotating her shoulders as best she can when she’s still sprawled on her back on the bed, and you notice that there’s faint red marks around her wrists.

“They didn’t hurt, did they?” You ask, suddenly worried.

“I’m a vampire, cutie,” she unnecessarily reminds you. “If they did hurt, they don’t anymore.”

You huff. “I was just  _checking_.”

Now that you aren’t preoccupied with getting her to come, the aching heat between your legs hits you full force, and you try valiantly not to squirm on Carmilla’s lap. You should at least let her get some feeling back in her arms before pouncing on her. However, it doesn’t escape Carmilla’s notice that you’re practically dripping all over her, her gaze flicking down to where you’re sitting on her thighs, and then there’s a particularly lecherous smirk spreading over her face when she looks at your face again.

She leans up so you can unhook her bra and throw it onto the floor, followed by your own underwear, before she says, “Come here,” reaching up and tugging you down into a kiss, and then her hands are on the backs of your thighs, pulling you up her body. You stop shuffling when you’re straddling her stomach, but she nudges at your legs more insistently, biting on your bottom lip before growling, “No, I mean  _come here_.”

It takes a few seconds for you to realise where she wants you, and you bite back an embarrassingly loud moan when you do, kissing her quickly before letting her shift you up and up and up until you’re hovering on your knees directly above her face.

You glance down just in time to catch sight of her mischievous smirk and remember that she doesn’t have to breathe and  _holy hell you’re going to die_.

A shiver goes through your body when you feel Carmilla’s breath hitting your overheated centre, and her arms slide around your thighs to pull you down at the same time as she lifts her head and presses a wet kiss to your clit, opening her mouth and dragging her tongue against you. Your breath catches in your throat and you moan loudly at the feeling that floods your whole body.

She licks at you relentlessly, dipping to circle around your entrance and rising to flick against your clit, before she wraps her lips around it and sucks. Your hands shoot from where they’ve been sitting uselessly against your thighs, one grasping the top of the headboard and the other dropping down to tangle in Carmilla’s hair, holding her head steady as you start rocking your hips in time with the strokes of her tongue.

“Oh God, Carm,” you whimper out breathlessly when she starts sucking softly at your clit again, her lips enveloping it and her tongue rubbing insistently against it. Carmilla moans against you when your hands tighten in her hair, the vibrations shooting straight through you as your hips start rocking harder against her face, her tongue swirling around your clit before licking long, hot stripes through you.

You can feel yourself starting to lose control, the heat pooling in your lower stomach getting hotter and hotter, and Carmilla can probably sense it as well due to your thighs twitching either side of her head.

Your hips jerk desperately against her face and a loud moan tumbles from your lips when Carmilla slowly presses her tongue inside you, causing you to pitch forward, leaning your arm against the wall just above the headboard and resting your forehead against it.

“ _Fuck_ , oh God right there,” you moan when Carmilla plunges her tongue in deeper, causing your back to arch and your hips to grind down harder on her face. There’s a desperate chant of  _don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop_  coming from you now, your fingers tightening in Carmilla’s hair and your hips canting uncontrollably, while her lips suck at your clit and her tongue drags repeatedly over it, sending you over the edge.

You moan out Carmilla’s name as your orgasm surges through you, your head falling forward to lean against the wall and your hips continuing to roll down, Carmilla whimpering quietly and sliding her tongue through you in soft licks to bring you down slowly.

When it starts to be too much, you relinquish the death grip you have on her hair, lift your hips and shuffle down your body to collapse on top of her in a breathless heap. Carmilla’s hands stroke up and down your back and she presses kisses against your forehead and the top of your head, and for a while the only sounds in the room are the traffic outside and your labored breathing, until— “You realise you’re going to have to work on not being quite so loud when we get back to Silas? Cause I don’t think Perry is going to appreciate daily noise complaints about us. Or about you, technically.”

“I distinctly remember you screaming my name in several different instances in the past three days alone. You are just as bad as me.” It’s slightly muffled where your face is pressed against Carmilla’s chest, but you know she heard you when she laughs.

“Not possible, cutie,” she yawns, shifting you slightly so you’re more curling into her side than sprawled completely on top of her.

“Are you yawning? How are you tired? Where’s your vampire stamina?” You complain, poking her in the side and biting back a laugh when she twitches. Vampires, specifically Carmilla, being ticklish is one of the greatest things you have ever discovered.

“My  _vampire stamina_ ,” she mocks in a high-pitched voice, “Will be back once I have had some blood. And then,” her voice drops a few octaves and you shiver. “You’re going to be the one handcuffed, and I’m going to fuck you senseless and see how many times I can make you come before you can’t take it anymore. Now get off me, you weigh a ton.”

Charming.

Carmilla shoves you off of her, clambering out of bed and strutting towards the mini bar where she’s stashed her carton of ‘soy milk’.

(She complained the first night in Vienna about the ‘enormous effort’ it takes having to pour the blood bags from the hospital into the soy milk carton, but relented once you pointed out that when hotel staff came around to clean the room and saw three bags of o-negative sitting in the fridge then they’d probably call the police.)

You don’t bother to hide your leering as she wanders across the room completely naked to fetch a glass. She spins around to face you while she’s waiting for the blood to warm up, the wide grin on her face telling you she’s either about to make a particularly dirty comment or a particularly bad joke.

“Hey Laura?” She asks brightly. “Are you a tower?”

You have no idea what she’s talking about, and you briefly wonder if you squeezed her head with your thighs too tightly and she’s suffering from sudden onset brain damage or something.

“Because Eiffel for you.”

You’re pretty sure the entire floor hears how loudly you sigh.


	5. Reykjavik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plotless (seriously, there is barely any plot here) fluffy domestic fluff. With added smut.

The last week of your cross-continental holiday is spent in Reykjavik, and during this time you learn a few new facts about your girlfriend.

One, she apparently has her own apartment in central Reykjavik. After the twenty-minute drive from Keflavik Airport to the city centre, you stare at her for a solid thirty seconds when she pulls up outside an apartment block and not another huge fancy five star hotel. Then you feel like a complete jerk when she mutters something about Maman not needing her all the time, because of course she had to go somewhere when she wasn’t being used at Silas.

Considering she spends the majority of her time either at Silas or travelling around Europe, you’re not surprised that the apartment isn’t overly furnished. There’s a few Carmilla-esque touches dotted around; the sofa’s pitch black, obviously, but the bright pink pillow lying on it and the huge plasma screen TV opposite not so much. There’s an enormous painting hanging on the wall that you vaguely recognise as something she got particularly excited about in a very un-Carmilla like way at Ordrupgaard. Carmilla tells you it’s called Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog and it’s by Caspar David Friedrich, and it’s cute how she thinks you’re going to remember that. Camus and Voltaire and Shakespeare are some of the many, many books stuffed onto the overflowing bookcase, and there’s a dusty gramophone player sitting next to a pile of vinyl records, mostly jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and next to them is a stack of— “Are those Dr. Seuss books?”

Carmilla flushes, mumbling something about forgetting she left them out last time. The fact that your vampire girlfriend can blush is your second favourite discovery after finding out she’s extremely ticklish.

Secondly, she  _loves_  pop music, and spends an entire evening singing along to Taylor Swift’s entire discography while she cooks dinner. (The previous night was Abba, and Carmilla is probably going to make life very unpleasant for you when she discovers you videoed her belting out Dancing Queen and sent it to LaFontaine, Perry and Danny.) She skips over Last Kiss, claiming it’s too sad even for her, and it’s not like you’re ever going to have a last kiss, so the song is irrelevant.

You nearly choke on the forkful of spaghetti you’re shoveling into your mouth when she says that; it’s the first indication of ‘forever’ that Carmilla’s given, and if she realises the magnitude of her words, she doesn’t show it.

Third, for someone who claimed she’d rather drink garlic flavoured holy water from a silver stake-shaped glass than play Cluedo when Perry suggested it during the one weekly board game night in Danny’s room you managed to drag Carmilla to, she has a strangely large collection of board games stashed away in the hall cupboard. Including Cluedo. And somehow, she manages to turn every single one of them into strip board games.

(Except for Monopoly. But you’ve refused to ever play that with her again after the time she tried to hold up and rob the bank, kept trying to evict Danny from her properties citing a no dogs policy, and demanded double the rent money from LaFontaine after claiming, “the flames coming from your hair burned my hotel down, you need to compensate for the damage, so pay up before I call the police.”)

It’s around the time that you’re down to your underwear, while a fully-clothed Carmilla places down four tiles around your two-point word of ‘in’ to spell out ‘vagina’ before gleefully announcing, “That is a triple word score, sweetheart, now get naked,” that you realise you’re going to have to resign from the weekly board game nights, because you don’t think you can ever look at Scrabble the same way again.

It’s the same with card games. Uno has been ruined forever.

And fourth, she’s really,  _really_ awful at Mario Kart.

“Oh so there’s a skeleton, a short and fat version of the Grim Reaper, a talking toadstool and a gorilla on steroids, but no vampire? That’s just species-ist. Hey wait, go back. Yeah that one, the big badass looking dinosaur. Bowser. He looks like he wants to kill something, I want to play as him.”

“Laura, stop throwing banana peels at me or I swear to God I am never having sex with you again.”

“Stupid fucking anthropomorphic mushroom, where the frilly fuck did he appear— Laura! Fuck off! Get your big nosed dinosaur away from me! God I cannot believe people think you’re the nice one.”

“Oh my God I’m in first! I’m first! Wait, what’s this blue shell— I fucking hate this game oh my God.”

“Don’t fucking woohoo me you stupid Princess Satsuma— Princess Peach, whatever. She’s going to be the dead princess of the fucking underworld once I throw this bomb into that bitch’s— oh Jesus fucking Christ. Yes Laura, I did blow myself up again, thank you for asking.”

And your personal favourite, “Rainbow Road? That sounds gay, let’s do it,” which five seconds later is followed up with, “I’m going to single handedly resurrect the hungry light just to feed whoever invented this hellish game to it.”

Essentially, it’s just a bigger, more domestic and less supernatural version of living with Carmilla in the dorm room. Minus the endless stream of people barging in, and plus a proper cooker that you can burn waffles on.

There’s also more floor for Carmilla to leave her clothes lying around on, therefore more opportunities for you to trip over a discarded pair of leather pants, which now that you’re glaring at them like they deliberately reached out one leg and tripped you up, you realise you actually threw them there after ripping them off Carmilla the previous night.

You walk back out into the main room of the open plan apartment to politely yell at her to stop endangering your life, and find her lounging on the sofa in nothing but her underwear and knee socks, an unbuttoned flannel thrown over the tiny scrap of fabric masquerading as a bra.

She peers at you over the edge of the magazine she’s reading — who knew three hundred year old vampires were so interested in the trashy goings-on of the Kardashians — and winks.

Needless to say, you completely forget all about reprimanding her, and you end up being extremely late to your dinner reservation later that evening.

/

The third day, after you drag a sleepy Carmilla out for lunch and then spend half an hour at the duck pond — fifteen minutes spent actually feeding the ducks and fifteen minutes spent physically restraining Carmilla from turning into a panther and chasing the birds around — Carmilla announces she has to leave for the afternoon to visit one of her vampire “associates” in Selfoss to replenish her blood supply.

You’re in the bedroom peeling off your (necessary due to vampire girlfriend) scarf  _and_ turtleneck — you’re not even religious, but you thank every God you can think of that Reykjavik is cold even in late August, so you didn’t look out of place or melt from overheating — when Carmilla appears in the doorway and asks if you want to come with her.

A smug grin spreads across Carmilla’s face when you yank the turtleneck off, leaving you in just a tank top and revealing the large assortment of hickeys, bite marks and fang marks decorating your neck and the top of your chest.

“I look like I’ve been mauled by a wild animal,” you groan when you catch sight of yourself in the mirror.

“Hey, at least I refrained from biting you until after we visited the Blue Lagoon,” Carmilla offers unhelpfully, and not for the first time you curse her super fast healing. Your ‘revenge’ always fades after about an hour. “Think of how difficult it would’ve been to hide them there. You’d have had to wear a full body wetsuit or something equally as sexy.” She appears behind you in the mirror where you’re inspecting the damage, wrapping her arms around you and kissing one of the bite marks softly. “And technically, you kinda did get mauled by a wild animal.”

You grumble quietly at Carmilla’s giggling. “I try to forget that my girlfriend happens to be part-feline. Dating an undead vampire I can wrap my head around. Dating a cat still sounds a little weird, no offense.”

“It could be worse, I could turn into a dog. Or like a…a platypus.” Carmilla looks mildly disturbed at the thought, and you don’t want to know what’s going on in her mind for that to be the first animal she jumped to. “No one is threatened by platypuses.” Her eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Platypi?”

She looks so adorably concerned about the plural of platypus that you can’t help but wriggle around in her arms and kiss her affectionately.

“You’re such a dork.”

“Well I am in good company, cutie. So, you want to come with me? You’ll finally get to meet another vampire,” Carmilla says brightly. “Although having said that, Selfoss is at least fifty minutes away in the car, so…” She trails off nervously.

The thought of a fifty-minute drive there and a fifty-minute drive back is making you feel slightly nauseous, so you shake your head no. Carmilla smiles at you, leaning forward to kiss you on the cheek.

“I think one undead bloodsucker in my life is enough,“ you say, ignoring Carmilla’s indignant  _bloodsucker isn’t a term of endearment you know_. This coming from someone whose favourite nicknames for you are of the baked goods variety. “Besides, I don’t need another one. You’re my favourite vampire.”

“That’d be more flattering if the only other vampires you knew weren't Will or my Mother,” Carmilla deadpans.

She grumbles when you tilt your head back to kiss her on the cheek. She grumbles a bit more when you kiss her on the corner of her mouth, and a bit more when you brush your lips together, but her resolve is almost nonexistent after this long together so she happily kisses you back when you press your lips against hers the second time.

“It’s, uh—“ she starts after pulling away. “In the nicest possible way, it’s probably actually better you don’t come, cause Halldór is one of those stereotypical vampires pop culture seems to love, the kind that look down on humans, and I’d rather not subject you to an hour of snide comments about how I’ve  _lowered myself to a mere human_  or how you’re nothing more than a portable juice box,” she explains, which seems like a very good reason to not accompany her, and to instead take up Carmilla’s suggestion of wasting the afternoon baking.

(Perry bought you a cookbook for your birthday and told you to, “branch out from just cookies.” You suspect she’s secretly trying to turn you into her stress baking partner, since LaFontaine is apparently banned from the kitchen after The Meringue Incident, which Perry refuses to elaborate on, Danny can barely make toast without burning it, and Carmilla’s idea of ‘helping’ is to eat most of the batter whenever no one is keeping watch over the bowl.

Carmilla is in full support of your foray into baking, and informed you before kissing you goodbye and disappearing out the door that if you  _happened_  to make the particular cupcakes she’s so fond of — not a euphemism — then she’d repay you  _very_ well when she returned from Selfoss — definitely a euphemism.)

Fifteen minutes or so after Carmilla leaves, Hungry Like The Wolf starts blasting out of nowhere while you’re hunting through the cupboards for some flour, and after a few minutes of staring around the kitchen in confusion, you realise it’s coming from your phone. Once you finally locate it, “Teen Wolf would like FaceTime” is blinking up at you from the screen, in place of your normal background picture — a photo of a murderous looking Carmilla in her cat form, with a tiara perched on her head.

You roll your eyes, making a mental note to yell at Carmilla to stop changing everyone’s names in your phone when she gets back. You press  _accept_ , and Danny’s smiling face fills the screen.

“Hey Holl— wow, what’s with the expression? What did Fangs do now?”

“She changed your name in my phone to Teen Wolf.”

“Teen Wolf? She’s losing her touch,” Danny says, looking offended. “She’s saved as Corpse Bride in my phone. Her ringtone is Another One Bites The Dust, which she probably won’t be too pleased about, so uh, please don’t tell her that unless you want her to turn me into a fur coat.”

You’re about to ask Danny what on earth her and Carmilla text about, before you realise all they probably do is send stupid nicknames to each other.

Danny demands an update of your European travels since she last spoke to you in Copenhagen, and you launch into a top speed monologue detailing Paris and Reykjavik, while flipping through the cookbook and looking for the appropriate cupcake recipe. You leave out the absurd amount of sex that has occurred, since you’re pretty sure Danny doesn’t want or need to know that.

While you’re chattering on at top speed about the view of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, while Danny quietly grumbles in jealousy, you manage to find enough in-date ingredients to use to whip up some cupcake batter. You split the mixture into two separate bowls, and Danny pauses in the middle of her sentence and raises her eyebrows when you dump the remains of Carmilla’s carton of o-negative into one of them, turning the mixture a weird reddish brown colour.

“It looks horrible, I know,” you say, Danny’s nose wrinkling in disgust. “But she likes them, so. She claims they taste like red velvet cupcakes, and I am taking her word for it.”

Danny shudders, commenting on how weird vampires are. You squint at the screen when Danny shifts slightly, the familiar posters on her dorm room wall coming into view behind her. “Wait, are you back at Silas already?”

“Yeah, Elsie called me a few days ago and asked me to come back early, we have a poltergeist problem in the Summer Society house,” she grimaces. “It keeps eating all the cereal, and once you get past how weird it is to walk into the kitchen and see a box of Choco Crunch floating in the middle of the room, it starts to get annoying.”

You’re more concerned with the fact that the sentence  _we have a poltergeist problem_  doesn’t faze you at all, than the actual poltergeist problem. Which is concerning in itself.

“Beth tried to contact it via Ouija board to politely request it moves out, perhaps into the Zeta house, but it just kept flirting with her,” Danny pauses, and looks mildly disturbed. “I think she was kind of into it.”

She’s still ranting about the new undead resident of the Summer Society house — “I wouldn’t actually care all that much, but he chain smokes like all day, and the smell is disgusting.” — fifteen minutes later when Carmilla gets back.

The door opens and shuts, and you can faintly hear her humming over the rustling of her taking her jacket off. She strolls into the kitchen and dumps a box that you assume is packed with blood bags onto the counter next to the sink, and immediately rounds the island in the middle of the kitchen to get to you.

She slides up behind you, greeting you with an affection-laced, “Hey sweetheart,” and her arms wrap tightly around you. She nuzzles against the back of your neck, and then leans forward to press a kiss against your cheek.

“Aww,” Danny says mockingly, and you feel Carmilla stiffen against you. “How cute. Who knew the pulse-challenged could be so romantic?”

Carmilla glances up in surprise at Danny’s voice, seemingly not having noticed the extra presence. She glares at the phone propped up against the fruit bowl, where Danny’s delighted face is grinning back at her. “God I hate technology sometimes,” she grumbles, plastering on a fake smile and beaming at Danny. “Hello Growlithe.” Danny waves cheerfully at Carmilla. “Goodbye Growlithe.”

She reaches forwards and presses disconnect midway through Danny’s parting comment of, “Bye Laura, bye Bagheera, see you when—“

“Carm, don’t be so rude,” you huff, leaning back against Carmilla when she hugs you tighter.

“Her furry face was ruining my appetite,” Carmilla replies, resting her chin on your shoulder and looking at the plate of cupcakes with interest. She reaches out for one, and yelps loudly when you smack her hand with the spatula.

“They’re not finished yet, I’m waiting for them to cool down so I can ice them,” you reprimand her, waving the spatula in her face threateningly.

“Fine,” she grumbles, but returns her hands to their previous position on your hips, and now without the cupcakes to distract her, she focuses her full attention on you. One of her hands slips under the hem of your jumper, idly stroking at the bare skin of your hip, the other brushing your hair off your shoulder. She presses her lips against your neck, dusting soft kisses across your skin and sighing gently against you when you tip your head to the side, exposing more of your throat to her.

“I missed you,” she murmurs into your ear.

“You were only gone two hours.”

“Yeah well,” Carmilla mutters. “That’s two hours I could’ve spent doing this.”

In one fluid motion, she spins you around, pins you against the counter with her hips and leans forward to kiss you. Automatically you loop your arms around her neck, pulling her in closer. Her hands roam over your back, before slipping back under and stroking the small of your back gently.

Carmilla peppers kisses down your throat, tongue swiping over the faint bite marks still visible, before she reaches the neckline of your jumper, pulling back and squinting down at it. “Is this mine?” She asks, plucking at the jumper’s hem.

“Yep.” You inevitably spilled food all over yourself during the cupcake-making extravaganza, and when you went into the bedroom to change, Carmilla’s dark purple jumper happened to be lying on the bed. It’s a size too big on you, so you keep having to roll the sleeves up, but it’s warm and it smells like her. “I can take it off if you want.”

“No, keep it on,” Carmilla says after debating it for a few seconds, her voice low as her hands slide back under the jumper and trail across your stomach. “You look good in my clothes.”

Her hands slowly move upwards, and you both moan simultaneously when they reach their intended destination; Carmilla at the realisation you’re not wearing a bra, and you at the feeling of Carmilla’s hands squeezing at your chest.

She goes back to kissing you, brushing her tongue against yours and sucking on your bottom lip, while her fingers pinch and roll your nipples, tiny hot sparks of pleasure shooting through you.

The fingers you have tangled in her hair squeeze involuntarily when she pushes her thigh between your legs, her hips grinding against you slowly. One of her hands slides down from your chest to grab your ass tightly and urge you to rock against her harder.

The unfortunate need for oxygen makes you break the kiss, pulling back enough for you to catch sight of the heavy lust present in her darkened eyes. She leans her forehead against yours, and she smirks at the breathless noise you make when her fingers pop open the button on your jeans.

Dropping to her knees, she peels your pants and underwear down your legs, kissing at the tops of your thighs as she goes, and throwing them to the side once they’re off. She scrapes her nails lightly up the side of your legs as she stands back up, the sensation sending a shiver down your spine. She rests your foreheads together again, watching you with dilated pupils and a smirk as she slides her hand between your legs and presses her fingers against your clit.

“Oh God,” you groan, your head falling back of its own accord, which Carmilla immediately takes advantage of, leaning down and kissing your neck. She sucks and nibbles across your throat and over your collarbone, smiling against you when you whine her name breathlessly as the pressure of her fingers increases. It's so easy for Carmilla to turn you on it's almost embarrassing, but you can't really bring yourself to care, not when her fingers are making perfect circles around your clit

Much as you would love to just let her fuck you against the counter, the edge is digging into your back, pressing uncomfortably against the fading doorknob-shaped bruise on your lower back. A mark from the first night in Reykjavik courtesy of both the bedroom door, and of Carmilla being too eager to wait until the bed.

“Can we—  _oh God_.“ She bites down on a particularly sensitive spot on your neck, sucking harshly and adding to the collection of bruises and bite marks that decorate your body. “Ugh, Carm, the counter,” you manage to squeak out, tugging on Carmilla’s hair to get her attention.

“What about it?” She hums, moving her mouth up to your ear and chuckling at the desperate moan you let loose when she slides her fingers lower and presses the tips of them against your soaked entrance.

“It’s digging into my back,” you whine, your hips jerking forward when Carmilla bites at your ear. “Can we move this over to the sofa?  _Oh God_ , or even the wall?”

You’re starting to care less and less about the counter with each movement of Carmilla’s fingers. They’re back on your clit again, and they’ve speeded up to rub harder and faster against you. You’re two seconds away from telling her to forget you said anything, and beg her to just fuck you like she means it, when she pulls away completely and smirks at you with a wicked glint in her eye. “I have a better idea,” she purrs, taking ahold of your hips and spinning you back around to face the counter, her palm splaying out on your back and nudging you forward until you slump onto your elbows. “I think,“ she starts, leaning forward until her front is pressed completely against your back. “I like you right where you are.”

It’s all the warning you get before two of her fingers are sliding knuckle deep inside you, and your mouth is falling open in a long, low moan of pleasure. Her other arm wraps tightly around your waist to hold you up as she quickly sets a fast rhythm, sliding in deeply, curling, then pulling out to slam back in again.

One of your hands is gripping the edge of the counter hard enough for your knuckles to go white, while the other reaches up and back to tangle in Carmilla’s hair to pull her head down, and you moan quietly as she obediently litters kisses and bites all over your neck and shoulder.

Carmilla whimpers into your ear each time you tug on her hair too hard, twisting her fingers deep inside you, pressing them against the spot that makes your legs shake. Her other hand slips up your jumper again, pawing at your chest and rolling your nipples between her fingers.

You attempt to move your hips backwards to meet her thrusts in an attempt to get closer to the orgasm you can feel building up embarrassingly quickly, but with the way Carmilla now has you trapped in between her body and the counter, you’re basically immobile and completely at her mercy.

Carmilla’s thumb presses against your clit, rubbing rough circles against while she bites at your earlobe, whispering lewd comments about how much she likes fucking you like this. Her fingers curl inside you, and you moan out her name desperately, your eyes squeezing shut and your entire body shuddering as you clamp down on her fingers and your orgasm hits you like a freight train.

Carmilla’s hand that’s still on your chest drops back down to hold onto your waist when you slump bonelessly against her. She slides her fingers in and out a few more times gently, your breath hitching when she slowly drags them fully out. You lean your head back against her shoulder and turn your head to watch her sucking her fingers into her mouth, whimpering quietly when she tastes you.

The subdued heat low in your stomach roars back to life at the sight, so you turn around in Carmilla’s arms, grab onto the collar of her shirt and pull her forward into a deep kiss.

Carmilla presses forward, her hands reaching out to rest on the counter, trapping you in between it and her body. Your hands come up to the buttons on her shirt, hastily undoing them, and Carmilla pulls away with a chuckle. “Always so impatient.”

“And you’re not?” You shoot back with a raised eyebrow, deliberately brushing your fingers against the swell of her breast when you reach the buttons there, smirking at the way she shudders.

“Bedroom?” Carmilla suggests, leaning back slightly so she can watch you finish unbuttoning her shirt and push it over her shoulders.

You shake your head, murmuring, “Too far away, I want to fuck you now,” and then leaning back in to kiss her, placing your hand on her shoulders and pushing down until she gets the hint.

The linoleum of the floor is cold when your bare legs and ass make contact with it, but you promptly ignore it when Carmilla follows your lead, stripping her jeans off — deliberately peeling them off slowly and putting on a show — before sinking to her knees and straddling your lap. She reaches behind her to unclasp her own bra, tossing it to the side and adding to the pile of clothing, chuckling at the dumbfounded expression on your face, before pulling you into another kiss.

You still get slightly overwhelmed seeing her unclothed, even after eight months of being with her, so your hands flail about for a second, trying to decide which part of her to touch first. Making the decision for you, she takes hold of your hands and puts them on her waist, giggling into the kiss at your complete lack of smoothness. Her hands slide into your hair, nails scraping lightly against your scalp as she tilts your head up to get a better angle to kiss you.

Her kitchen floor is hardly the most romantic place in the world, but you spend ages just kissing Carmilla, nibbling and sucking at her bottom lip, stroking your tongue languidly into her mouth, brushing your lips against hers and kissing her deeply.

Tiny soft noises of contentment fall from Carmilla’s lips when you detach from her mouth in favour of dragging your lips across the curve of her jaw. You feel more than hear her quiet moans when you nip a trail down her throat, grazing your teeth across all the sensitive spots on her neck. You kiss across her collarbone, sucking a bruise into the base of her throat and feel her fingers tightening in your hair, holding you in place and nudging you closer to her chest. When you eventually wrap your lips around her nipple and suck gently, she whimpers, all but melting against you, and how responsive she is to every little touch borders on intoxicating from how much it affects you.

“Laura, come on,” she whimpers when your fingers start tracing patterns lightly on the backs of her thighs. Her hips roll down, grinding against your lap and she whines desperately when it apparently isn’t enough friction. You  _hmm_  quietly against her skin, trailing kisses across her cheek towards her ear, nibbling on the lobe gently. You bite your lip to stop yourself from moaning when she whispers, “I want you inside me,” into your ear, a low breathy whimper bordering on desperation, and you happily comply, sliding your hands towards her last remaining piece of clothing.

There’s a bit of awkward maneuvering while you attempt to get her underwear off, but then she’s back to straddling you, gloriously naked and dripping wet. Carmilla sighs out in pleasure when you stroke your fingers between her legs, before pressing them against her entrance and you watch, captivated, as she sinks down onto your fingers, her eyes fluttering shut and her head tipping back.

Carmilla buries her face into your shoulder when you slowly start moving your fingers, her breathy moans echoing into your ear as she rocks her hips down to meet your thrusts.

You splay your hand out on her lower back, encouraging her movements, while your mouth presses kisses to every inch of available skin you can reach. Her back arches and she throw her head back, whining out a desperate  _fuck Laura oh my God_  when you curl your fingers and brush a thumb against her clit at the same time.

“Carm, hey,” you murmur, pressing on her back to nudge her back forward. Her eyes open, dark and dilated pupils staring at you hungrily. “Come here. I want to watch you.”

Carmilla leans forward to rest her forehead against yours, arms sliding around your shoulders and clinging to you desperately as you pick up the pace of your fingers. Up close, her eyes are almost completely black where they’re gazing into yours with a heady mix of lust and love, her breath coming in labored gasps that you feel against your mouth. She’s so wound up just from touching you that it doesn’t take her much longer to tumble over the edge, gasping your name against your lips as her nails dig into your shoulders and she clamps down, hot and wet and tight around your fingers.

You slip your fingers out of her, licking them clean before wrapping your arms around her and bringing her closer to you. Carmilla slumps into your embrace with a content sigh, leaning her head on your shoulder and nuzzling against your neck.

“You know,” she begins, and you can feel her smiling against you. “As much fun as having sex on the kitchen floor is, can we maybe not do that again anytime soon, my knees are really sore.”

You snort, shoving at her shoulder painfully. “You won’t feel it in like, an hour at the most. Meanwhile the poor human in this relationship can already feel a giant, counter-shaped bruise starting to appear on her back.”

Carmilla pulls back with a laugh, pressing an affectionate kiss to your cheek as she goes. She glances up at the counter, then lifts herself up — her legs still slightly shaky, you note with smugness — and reaches for something above you, before settling back down holding a cupcake.

She brandishes it in your direction. “Think they’ve cooled down by now, Betty Crocker?”

“If you ever want to get laid again, don’t call me Betty Crocker. And they still aren’t iced you know. Someone distracted me,” you say with a grin, leaning back against the island and watching her remove the casing, and taking an alarmingly large bite of the red cupcake. Watching Carmilla devour an entire batch of blood-cupcakes has always been slightly terrifying.

Carmilla shrugs, wolfing cupcake number one down quickly. “Like that was a bad way to spend our time.”

Which is a good point, you suppose, poking at her stomach when she reaches up for another cupcake and stuffs half of it in her mouth. “Pig.”

“Hey,” she says, gesturing to herself with the hand not holding a cupcake. “I get to look like this forever, I can be as much of a pig as I want.”

You take in her appearance, and notice how ridiculous she looks. Her hair is a tangled mess, she’s completely naked, and she’s dropping crumbs everywhere. Mostly all over you. She looks ridiculous, and so carefree and happy.

“I love you,” you murmur, wondering if you look as dopey and lovestruck as you feel. Probably.

“I love you too,” she replies through a mouthful of the second half of the cupcake. “You know, as long as you keep making me these, that is.”

Then she leans forward and tries to kiss you with her mouth still full.

“Oh my God, Carmilla  _no_. I take it back, I can’t stand you. You’re disgusting. Get away from– Carmilla, stop!”

/

The last day, you spend the morning and afternoon doing the Golden Circle.

Cars are not your favourite things in the world but Carmilla semi-successfully distracts you by driving slowly and singing along to Lady Gaga on the radio at the top of her lungs. You’d probably feel a bit better if she was holding your hand, but when she tries to reach across the centre console your chest gets tight and you quietly ask her to keep both handles on the wheel.

(She knows about the accident and the patch of ice and you waking up in hospital two days later, and your mom not waking up all; you told her about it after waking up from a nightmare involving charred twisted metal and the smell of gasoline. She had hugged you tightly after, then pulled back and asked point blank with the most serious expression you’ve ever seen her wear, “Where are your sock puppets?”)

Carmilla makes fun of your attempts at pronouncing Icelandic words — “It looks like a P, why the hell is it pronounced like ‘th’ this language makes no sense.” You have to tell Carmilla not to get out of the car and attack a sheep that steadfastly refuses to move from the middle of the road. Carmilla does her usual show of grumping and huffing before she allows herself to be dragged into fifty different selfies at every part of þingvellir, and when you first catch sight of Gulfoss every minute in the car is worth it — “Not to disrespect my Canadian patriotism, but Niagara Falls have nothing on this, wow.”

Later that evening, you choose to stay in on your last night before having to return to Silas and its weirdness, ordering your body weight in Thai food, and putting on the first Ice Age movie, since Carmilla having never seen any of them is a travesty. You make it about halfway through before Carmilla’s hands start wandering, and you end up having to switch off the movie since Carmilla’s apparently really intent on making out with you on the couch. Which inevitably, leads to shirts being unbuttoned and pants being discarded to the floor and spending most of the evening fucking on the couch. Multiple times.

Hours later, after Carmilla fell off the sofa and proceeded to drag you, some blankets and the pillows down instead of just getting back up, you’re snuggled up to her side, your arm flung across her waist and your face pressed against her neck, breathing the scent of her in. Carmilla’s apartment is on the top floor of the building, and there’s a large skylight right above where you’re cuddled up together, giving you a perfect view of the starry night sky. Well, Carmilla has a perfect view of it. All you can really see is the side of Carmilla's neck and some of her hair where you're pressed against her side.

“You know, I really am going to miss this privacy once we get back to Silas,” Carmilla says, her fingers idly tracing patterns onto the bare skin of your shoulder and her lips brushing against your forehead when she speaks. “Since I doubt any of the dimwit squad have taken my advice or any of my threats seriously and learned basic manners such as knocking before barging into a room.”

You snort; Carmilla of all people reprimanding LaFontaine, Perry and Danny about  _manners_  has always amused you.

“You know we could always just get an off-campus place together.” You manage to keep your voice even and casual, even though Carmilla can probably hear how fast your heart is beating. “Not right away, obviously, but maybe after you graduate. Again." You try to quickly do the math in your head. "How many degrees do you even have?”

Carmilla laughs. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“We already live together you idiot,” you say, swatting her on the shoulder. “But think about it, no one to barge in on us all the time, more places for us to have sex in—“

“I’m sold already.”

/

Carmilla doesn’t get nightmares very often anymore, but when you slowly slip back into consciousness, you realise the noise that woke you up is Carmilla’s voice, muttering quietly in German. You assume she’s just talking in her sleep as usual, but then you catch the words  _blood_  and  _no_  and  _please_. She begs for someone to spare her, and once she starts whimpering about not only her mother but also her father, you realise she’s dreaming about her human family.

You gently shake her away, murmuring her name quietly until her eyes spring open and she blinks quickly, staring around the room wildly like a caged animal until her gaze lands on you.

“Hey,” you say, slowly reaching out to cup her cheek, waiting to see if she bats your hand away. She doesn’t. “It was just a dream okay, you’re safe. I’m here.”

Her rigid body relaxes, and she collapses into your embrace, sniffling quietly. Smoothing back her bangs off her forehead, you drop kisses onto the top of her head and rub your hands up and down her back until she stops shaking.

"Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, muffled into your neck where her face is pressed. “You’re here, of course I’m okay.”

You smile against her hair and tighten your arms around her in response. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Um, not really,” she glances up at you apologetically. You kiss her on the forehead, and she gets the message that you don’t mind if she doesn’t want to talk about it. “I uh, I just sometimes dream about them. My family from when I was still human.” She pulls away from you slightly, rolling onto her back to squint up at the skylight in confusion. “Will was there too this time, for whatever reason.”

Carmilla doesn’t say anything else, and you know her well enough by now to tell that there’s something, more than just the nightmare, bothering her. “What is it?”

“I—“ she bites her lip, looking away from you. “I just miss him sometimes. I know he was an asshole, and he tried to kill you, he nearly killed Kirsch and LaF but…” She trails off, glancing furtively in your direction as if she’s trying to gauge your reaction. You certainly don’t miss him, but there’s a lot about Carmilla and Will’s relationship that you don’t know about, and you don’t see anything wrong with Carmilla missing her brother. “He wasn’t always like that. For the longest time he was all I had.” Carmilla turns to look at you, shutting her eyes and huffing out a laugh. “God, he literally tried to kill you, and here I am telling you I miss him.”

“Hey, Carm it’s okay,” you say, reaching out to take her hand where it’s covering her face. You link your fingers together and trace your thumb gently over the back of her hand. “I mean I’m not saying I completely understand it, or that I’m sorry he died, because I don’t and I’m not really, but… He was your brother. You’re allowed to miss him.”

Carmilla smiles weakly, bringing your conjoined hands up to press a kiss to the back of yours. Over your knuckles, she looks at you suspiciously. “What?”

“What?” You parrot back in confusion.

“You have that look on your face, the one you get when you want to say something but you don’t know if it’ll make me kiss you or run out of the room.”

Of course you have a look for that. You bite your lip nervously, trying to figure out how to word what you want to tell her.

“I just— I know that it could never really compare to your actual birth family, and I know you were in love with Ell for longer than I’ve even been alive, and there was Will but—“ you cut yourself off, wondering if you’re overstepping an invisible line. “You have me now, and you have Perry and LaFontaine, and even though I know you will never admit to it, you have Danny and Kirsch too. You have a family.”

Carmilla’s silent for a few long moments, shifting to prop herself up on her elbow. The sheet falls down from her chest and you catch sight of the three little silver scars in the middle of her chest — “Think the Red Wedding, but redder,” she had said of the ball her murder took place at.

“Yes, I was in love with Ell for decades, she was beautiful and sweet and everything I thought I wanted, but ultimately it was doomed from the start. She never would have been able to accept me for what I truly am—“ your heart aches; Carmilla’s a who, not a what. “—So regardless of my Mother’s...interference, we never would’ve lasted.”

“You’re not a monster,” you whisper, placing your finger over her lips when she tries to protest. “You don’t have to say it. I know you still see yourself as one.”

Carmilla blinks rapidly and looks away from you, her telltale sign that she’s fighting back tears. You wonder how many times Carmilla will have to hear you tell her she’s not a monster before she starts to believe it.

“Monster is usually synonymous with murderer, and I have killed so many people Laura. Hundreds and hundreds of innocent lives,” she pauses. “And I enjoyed it.”

“You and I both know that you’re not that person anymore Carm. I mean yeah, you’re not human, but you’re also not a monster,” you continue, shuffling around until you’re mirroring her position, lying on your front and propped up on your elbows. “You’re just… You.”

“Eloquent,” Carmilla deadpans with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut up,” you say, nudging her with your shoulder. “You’re  _you_ , and I love you because of it, not in spite of it. You don’t need to try to change any parts of yourself, or hide any part of you because you’re worried it’ll scare me off. It’s not going to make me love you any less. Besides, it took me long enough to get you, don’t think I have any intentions of letting you go now.”

She doesn’t say anything in reply, just slumps down onto her front while you gently trace patterns into the smooth skin of her back, spelling out  _I love you_ across her spine and shoulder blades until she rolls over to cuddle up to you, burying her face in your neck and winding her arms around your waist.

You know Carmilla loves you. Over three hundred years of abuse and trauma and being conditioned to see herself as a monster unworthy of any kind of love or affection. Being told that love is foolish and that flesh cannot love stone. And yet, Carmilla loves you. Is  _in_  love with you.

“You know," Carmilla begins quietly, glancing up at you. "I was alive for eighteen years, undead for three hundred, but no one has ever made me feel more alive than you have in the past eight months. The depth of the love I feel for you far surpasses that which I felt for Ell. Surpasses anything I thought possible to feel again after Ell. You’re the first place that’s felt like home in over three hundred years.”

Carmilla’s never really been one for big speeches, she prefers to show you she loves you in little romantic actions and sweet gestures, so you’re a little surprised by that. You blink away the tears that prick at your eyes, wrapping your arms around her tighter and kissing her forehead, hoping your voice doesn’t sound too emotionally shaky when you speak. “Technically, I think a home is supposed to be a some _place_  not a some _one_ , you know.”

“Fine,” Carmilla huffs, and you don’t even have to be able to see her face to know she’s rolling her eyes with a fond smile on her face. “Then my home is wherever I’m with you. Stop ruining my romantic declarations of love with semantics.”

Her sleepy words are muffled where her face is pressed against your neck, but eventually you make out the words and realise she’s singing quietly to you.

“ _Well I never had a place that I could call my very own, that’s all right, my love, cause you’re my home._ ”

You don't recognise the song, but you definitely share the sentiment. You hug her tightly, listening to her breathing even out as she drifts back to sleep.

"You're mine too, Carm."


End file.
